Jeremy Clarkson Quotes & Sayings

Now we get quite a lot of complaints that we don't feature enough affordable cars on the show so we'll kick off tonight with the cheapest Ferrari of them all! — Jeremy Clarkson

Honest to God, the Qubo is so slow that if you climbed into one this morning in Hunstanton and attempted to drive south as fast as possible, coastal erosion would swallow you up by Wednesday evening. — Jeremy Clarkson

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition. — Jeremy Clarkson

If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends' houses so they don't see its backside. — Jeremy Clarkson

I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits. — Jeremy Clarkson

I'm not only in touch with my feminine side, I'm in touch with my gay side as well. — Jeremy Clarkson

It couldn't pull a greased
stick out of a pig's bottom — Jeremy Clarkson

Some say that he has no understanding of clouds, and that his ear wax tastes like Turkish Delight. All we know is he's called the Stig. — Jeremy Clarkson

Mix an anorexic body with a heart made of pure fire and you are going to go with a savagery that's hard to explain. — Jeremy Clarkson

Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant's foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet's ability to self-heal. — Jeremy Clarkson

Do they think that, if left to our own devices, we'd all park on zebra crossings for a year? If they do, it means they don't trust us. And if they don't trust us, then the relationship has broken down and it's time for some civil unrest. — Jeremy Clarkson

Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear. I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would. — Jeremy Clarkson

Asking the front wheels of a car to do their normal job of steering while handling more than 170hp is like asking a man to wire a plug while juggling ... penguins ... while making love ... to a beautiful woman while on fire, on stage ... in front of the Queen. It's all going to go wrong. — Jeremy Clarkson

All this health and safety talk is just killing me. — Jeremy Clarkson

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm. — Jeremy Clarkson

If we build three million new houses by 2020, where will we grow all the stuff needed to feed the people who live in them? — Jeremy Clarkson

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face. — Jeremy Clarkson

Sometimes I stagger even myself with my genius. — Jeremy Clarkson

I am aware, of course, that many men do hate the sight of their wife and children. Doctors even have a name for these people: 'anglers'. — Jeremy Clarkson

There are many rules for the elderly in the Highway Code. I have one too, and here it is: get a bloody move on. — Jeremy Clarkson

Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world — Jeremy Clarkson

We are going to have to stop penalising people for making that most human of gestures- mistake — Jeremy Clarkson

No. I suspect the reason we choose to visit a supermarket rather than flog around a town that was designed by King Alfred is that it's so much more convenient. And that, I think, is where a solution to the problem of urban decay can be found. Realistically, we can never do anything to reverse the spread of supermarkets, but we can level the playing field. We just have to make town-centre shopping easier. And that can be achieved by getting rid of traffic wardens. Or civil enforcement officers, as they are now called. — Jeremy Clarkson

In the olden days I always got the impression that TVR built a car, put it on sale, and then found out how it handled. Usually when one of their customers wrote to the factory complaining about how dead he was. — Jeremy Clarkson

This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots. — Jeremy Clarkson

The Suzuki Wagon R should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite — Jeremy Clarkson

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space. — Jeremy Clarkson

Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference. — Jeremy Clarkson

She can take a year to read something, whereas I like a book that becomes more important in my life that life itself.
When I was in the middle of 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy - which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist - you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn't have noticed. — Jeremy Clarkson

I'm not capable of having an affair. You can ask my wife. I'm not physically capable. — Jeremy Clarkson

Tonight, the new Viper, which is the American equivalent of a sportscar in the same way, I guess, that George Bush is the equivalent of a President. — Jeremy Clarkson

The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian. — Jeremy Clarkson

Americans are good at herding Bison. The end. — Jeremy Clarkson

The air conditioning in Lamborghinis used to be an asthmatic sitting in the dashboard blowing at you through a straw. — Jeremy Clarkson

Let's be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It's a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark. — Jeremy Clarkson

I'm a horse of a man! — Jeremy Clarkson

If you're writing, it means getting up and writing all day, and if you're filming, it's getting up and filming all day. I get up, go to my computer, write, turn it off, and go to bed. That is a Clarkson day. — Jeremy Clarkson

When I was 16, I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be. — Jeremy Clarkson

Why is the forecast so bland? Why instead of 'stormy' don't they just say the sea's 'a frothing maelstrom of terror and hopelessness'? — Jeremy Clarkson

(on iPhone) the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that I'm a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when I'm on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort. — Jeremy Clarkson

Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you. — Jeremy Clarkson

I mean its a weekly occurrence that somebody will complain that Top Gear was on last night - and you just sit back and wait for the complaints. But if you start to pay attention to everyones concerns, you end up with something bland and boring. So you sort of have to ignore everybody in order to do the show how we want to do it. — Jeremy Clarkson

There are shantytowns in South Africa that are built better than Renaults! — Jeremy Clarkson

It's what non-car people don't get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that's all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities ... You can develop a relationship with a car and that's what non-car people don't get ... When something has foibles and won't handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that's how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won't get. — Jeremy Clarkson

The only person to ever look good in the back of a 4-seater convertible was Adolf Hitler — Jeremy Clarkson

Usually, a Range Rover would be beaten away from the lights by a diesel powered wheelbarrow. — Jeremy Clarkson

As I've said before, I never understand why people ski down a slope to a bar and then go on a lift so they can ski down the same slope again. That's like walking to the pub on a Sunday, then going home and walking to the pub again. Madness. — Jeremy Clarkson

The "public" seems to have bought into this belief that life can, and should, be run without risk, that all accidents are avoidable, and that death is something that only happens to people who eat meat and smoke. — Jeremy Clarkson

Boredom forces you to ring people you haven't seen for eighteen years and halfway through the conversation you remember why you left it so long. Boredom means you start to read not only mail-order catalogues but also the advertising inserts that fall on the floor. Boredom gives you half a mind to get a gun and go berserk in the local shopping centre, and you know where this is going. Eventually, boredom means you will take up golf. — Jeremy Clarkson

I started to realise that being impolite saves an awful lot of time and costs you nothing. — Jeremy Clarkson

Driving most supercars is like trying to manhandle a cow up a back staircase, but this is like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley. — Jeremy Clarkson

I dish the dirt out, and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it? In 20 years, I have taken any number of stories, most of which are not true, without a murmur of complaint. But some stories you have to draw the line and say No. — Jeremy Clarkson

Nothing can prepare you for the yawning chasm of time that passes in Canada before the healthcare system actually does any healthcare. — Jeremy Clarkson

Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You've heard she's mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn't
you? — Jeremy Clarkson

You know what, I distinctly remember my boat blew up and I was killed! — Jeremy Clarkson

God may have created the world in six days, but while he was resting on the seventh, Beelzebub popped up and did this place. — Jeremy Clarkson

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can 'abandon ship' even when you're in space. — Jeremy Clarkson

Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun. — Jeremy Clarkson

In the olden days it was easy to make a television work.You plugged an aerial cable into the back, then bashed the top with your fist until, eventually, Hughie Green stopped jumping up and down. — Jeremy Clarkson

This is the Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that's much to shout about. That's like saying "Ooh good I've got syphilis, the BEST of the sexually transmitted diseases." — Jeremy Clarkson

I don't think I am particularly funny. In fact, I know I'm not. — Jeremy Clarkson

I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me. — Jeremy Clarkson

It was as relaxing as being tickled. — Jeremy Clarkson

I think it's a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit. — Jeremy Clarkson

It won't be a volcano that ends man's existence on this planet. It'll be the no-win no-fee lawyers. They are the ones who brought Europe to a halt last week. They are the ones who made a simple trip from Berlin to London into a five-country, all-day hammer blow on your licence fee. They are the ones who must be stopped. — Jeremy Clarkson

Some say his droppings have been found as far north as York, and that he has a full size tattoo of his face, on his face. All we know is he's called the Stig. — Jeremy Clarkson

You have city centre pubs where men go to meet girls, not realising that all girls in city centre pubs have thighs like tug boats and morals that would surprise a zoo animal. — Jeremy Clarkson

You're a car, but most of all, what you are, what you've become, is a mate. And that's what makes a car special. That's what makes a car great. You start to think of it as a person. You start to love it. — Jeremy Clarkson

I'm sorry, but having an Aston Martin DB9 on the drive and not driving it is a bit like having Keira Knightley in your bed and sleeping on the couch. — Jeremy Clarkson

No really. If you only have seven years left, that means the Reaper will be dropping round for tea and buns in about 61,000 hours from now. You therefore shouldn't be wasting time by pootling to the garden centre at walking pace. So come on, grandad. The clock's ticking. Pedal to the metal. Or you'll be in your flowerbed before the plants you bought. — Jeremy Clarkson

Speed focuses the mind. It cuts through the fog of drab everyday living and keeps us on our toes. Speed works. Speed saves lives. Speed is good. And we should have more of it, not less. — Jeremy Clarkson

There's never been a safer time to go for a ride. Sadly, though, there's a problem. You see, cycling is seen now not as something that might be exhilarating or even useful but as a frontline propaganda weapon in the war on capitalism, banking, freedom, McDonald's, injustice, Swiss drug companies, rape and progress. Every morning London is chock-full of little individually wrapped Twiglets, their wizened faces contorted with hatred for all that they see. Fat people. Cars. Chain stores. It's all fascism. Fascism, d'you hear? From what they see as the moral high ground, they sneer at pedestrians, howl at buses, bang on cars, scream at taxi drivers and charge through every convention that defines society with their walnutty bottoms in the air and their stupid legs going nineteen to the dozen. — Jeremy Clarkson

[A Bugatti Veyron is] quite the most stunning piece of automotive engineering ever created ... At a stroke then, the Veyron has rendered everything I've ever said about any other car obsolete. It's rewritten the rule book, moved the goalposts and in the process, given Mother Nature a bloody nose. — Jeremy Clarkson

Recently, I spent eight days in a car with my co-host from Top Gear James May, who has a notoriously flatulent bottom. But because he was living on army rations the interior was always pine fresh and lemon zesty. — Jeremy Clarkson

If a football official were to call for a slow-motion replay every time Didier Drogba fell over, each match would last about six weeks. — Jeremy Clarkson

If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car, (about the BMW X3). — Jeremy Clarkson

To address this, we must wage a war on the militants. First, we must make it an offence, punishable by many years in jail, to ride a bicycle in anything other than what I like to call home clothes. Cycling shops selling gel for your bottom crack and outfits with padded gussets will be raided by the police and the owners prosecuted. This way, cyclists will be stripped of their uniforms and made to look like human beings. — Jeremy Clarkson

If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth. — Jeremy Clarkson

Because drug dealers shoot each other in London, Norfolk farmers can't have guns to defend their homes. I mean, no one wants a gun - except at 4am when they hear a strange sound in the kitchen. — Jeremy Clarkson

I don't often agree with the RSPCA as I believe it is an animal's duty to be on my plate at supper time. — Jeremy Clarkson

If you go through the pearly gates backwards in a fireball, that's a cool way to die! — Jeremy Clarkson

That [Pagani] Zonda, really! It's like a lion in orange dungarees. Kind of fierce, but ridiculous all at the same time. — Jeremy Clarkson

I think people who watch 'Top Gear' think they're the only ones watching it, which I quite like, because it can hopefully last for a long time. — Jeremy Clarkson

Koenigsegg are saying that the CCX is more comfortable. More comfortable than what BEING STABBED? — Jeremy Clarkson

I don't understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do? — Jeremy Clarkson

The newest Ferrari of them all, the 458, the Italia. The GT3 was good, but nowhen near as good as this ... almost nothing on Earth is as good as this ... Set that something I've just told, involving Cameron Diaz ... and some honey ... then it comes that even that isn't as good as this. — Jeremy Clarkson

Biathletes need to eat 6.000 calories a day: six thousand! That's the equivalent of 2 pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 TWIX bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete! — Jeremy Clarkson

You take out an injunction against somebody or some organisation and immediately news of that injunction and the people involved and the story behind the injunction is in a legal-free world on Twitter and the Internet. It's pointless. — Jeremy Clarkson

If the Scottish want to break away, I shall stand on Hadrian's Wall with a teary handkerchief, and say: 'Good riddance to the lot of you, and take your stupid bagpipes with you.' — Jeremy Clarkson

The prime minister is a Labour Tory. There's a mosque at the end of your street and a French restaurant next door. We are neither in nor out of Europe. We are famous for our beer but we drink in wine bars. We are not a colonial power but we still have a commonwealth. We are jealous of the rich but we buy into the Hello! celebrity culture. We live in a United Kingdom that's no longer united. We are muddled. — Jeremy Clarkson

and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say 'vanquish'. — Jeremy Clarkson

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going. — Jeremy Clarkson

Argentina and Burma. I have been to most of the countries in the world, but not those two. I want to shoot doves in Argentina. Burma, of course, because no one has really been there. — Jeremy Clarkson

I'm having a nice cold pint and waiting for this to blow over. — Jeremy Clarkson

International hand of freindship. A cigarette — Jeremy Clarkson

In Italy, you sometimes get the impression they'd be happier to lose the Ppe than lose their right to drive like maniacs. — Jeremy Clarkson

Now at this point you are probably thinking: so what? There is no Ebola in the world at the moment. Oh yes there is, but despite a twenty-year, multi-million-dollar hunt nobody has been able to find where it lives. Some say the host is a bat, others say it's a spider or a space alien. All we know is that occasionally, and for no obvious reason, someone comes out of the jungle with bleeding eyes and his stomach in a bag. — Jeremy Clarkson

Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It's like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You'd just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke's sweaty face. — Jeremy Clarkson

I was reading The Mirror the other day and came across a letter from a reader who wrote, 'I was riding my bike to work when this red Ferrari pulled up next to me. Out of the window, Jeremy Clarkson shouted 'Get a car', and drove off.' What I actually said was, 'Get a car you hatchet faced, leaf-eating tw*t — Jeremy Clarkson

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an E. M. Forster novel. — Jeremy Clarkson