thebaffer

A Transcript of Jeremy Clarkson’s Racism Allegations Apology:

Words by: BBC Media Relations Salvage Team, as spoken by Jeremy Clarkson.

Other Words by: Jeremy Clarkson’s brain as written by thebaffer

“Ordinarily I don’t respond to newspaper’s allegations…”

I don’t read newspapers, they are for plebs to sleep in, eat out of and be wrapped in when they die…

“… but on this occasion I feel I must make an exception.”

…I’m busted on video and even I can’t public-schoolboy my way out of this one.

“A couple of years ago I recorded an item for Top Gear in which I quoted the rhyme…”

It was a segment where they asked me to ‘rhyme’ and I’m not in any way gifted …

“… eeney meeny miney moe.”

…I desperately scrabbled at anything to make me more interesting.

“Now, of course, I was well aware that in the best known version of this rhyme…”

I’m actually aware of nothing outside my own bottom…

“…there is a racist expression that I was EXTREMELY keen to avoid.”

…I wasn’t going to avoid it at all. Other people do controversial humour. I wanna play…

“The full rushes show that…”

I’ve watched them 1000 times to try to find an escape from this.

“…I did 3 takes…”

…16 less than for this video, contrition is hard to perfect…

“…in two, I mumbled where the offensive word would normally occur”

… it really took me that long to think of a replacement…

“… and in the third I replaced it all together with the word teacher.”

…I’m not a racist, but I do inexplicably hate public sector workers.

“Now when I viewed this footage several weeks later…”

I was in Italy, busy driving a car made from the overworked skin of Nurses, when HR called me…

“…I realised in one of the mumbled versions, if you listen very carefully…”

…I was talking over the video at the time, telling them all that I’m infallible…

“… with the sound turned up…”

…my voice was still louder…

“…it did appear that I’d actually used the word I was trying to obscure.”

… I said ‘nigger’.

“I was mortified by this, horrified, it is a word I loathe…”

But I can, and will, still say it. I. Am. Jeremy. Fucking. Clarkson.

“… and I did everything in my power  to make sure that that version did not appear…”

….BBC minions actually did it for me…

“…in the programme that was transmitted.”

…in the Press.

“In fact, I have here, the note I wrote, at the time, to the production office…”

It’s definitely the same note, here on this bit of paper, right here, the same note…

“… and it says:  ‘I didn’t use the n-word here…”

…although I did, I said ‘nigger’.

“…but I’ve just listened through my headphones…”

…I tell BBC production staff how I listen to tapes. This is why the production crew hate me so much they leak videos…

“…and it sounds like I did.”

…because I did. I did. I said ‘nigger’.

“… is there another take that we could use?’”

… they didn’t like ‘teacher’ either, FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

“… … … Please be assured…”

… Was that pause long enough? I had a sad face on too  😦 …

“…I did everything in my power to NOT USE THAT WORD…”

…I genuinely have no control over the drivel that leaks out my saggy face hole…

“…and…”

…sigh, this is so dull…

“…as I’m sitting here, begging your forgiveness…”

…I must be looking right at the camera here…

“… for the fact that obviously, my efforts weren’t quite good enough.”

… because ‘nigger’ slipped out, and I could not catch it by its toe.

“Thank you.”

Can I go back to Italy now?

I’m not in the habit of extensively trashing ‘celebrities’. For the most part, I’m not interested enough in them to bother.

Jeremy Clarkson is the exception.

As background, I’ve unreasonably hated him since I was a child. His face made me feel uncomfortable, the monsters in my dreams had his voice, and him being on television during my puberty has probably made me infertile. Just as I cannot help a physical attraction, I cannot help a physical repulsion.

On a normal day, I’d just mute the bits of Top Gear where he’s on and not take it any further, but today, his job hangs in the balance, and I believe he should be sacked, so I’m having a rant.

As an adult, Clarkson is still the voice of my monsters. He is a rich and arrogant man with barely any sense of how most people live.

Clarkson shouldn’t be sacked for saying the ‘n-word’. He’s trying to make it seem like it’s the ‘offensive word’ that’s the problem; he’s clouding a more central issue.

Any word is a cultural word, and no word should be censored entirely from sensible, contextual discussion. Clarkson should be sacked for not being able to say another word, or unimaginatively enjoying the potential shock value, or for not just owning up and admitting he said it; he should be sacked for clearly demonstrating that he is, at best, bloody stupid.

Clarkson should be sacked as a symbol for racism at its most dangerous level, the unconscious one. He should be sacked because he is a long time out of date and no one will ever be able to explain to him why.

Also, he should be sacked because any woman on television his age would be painted up like a Victorian Doll’s House and he gets to go on telly with a face like camel balls.

Enough.

I went through a phase in my early twenties, I’m not proud of it. I’m even less proud now I’m telling you about it. I wish it had been a phase of drugs, porn or veganism; all of which would have been less embarrassing. Back then, I fancied myself as a Byronic Urban Mentalist and would exclusively wear pink from head to toe.

I was, in short, a bit of a cunt. At the height of my idiocy, I discovered a performer who I fell in love with immediately, and that hero worship never left me.

I have watched everything I can find that this man has produced and I have read everything he’s written (I’ve not understood all of it). I have gone out of my way to see him perform in venues nationwide and have genuinely thought it was worth every open –mouthed minute.

I love Derren Brown and this is my hero story.

I met Derren Brown on March 5^th 2012, it was a cold and windy night. It may sound like a trite way to start a story, but I live in Manchester, and it was March, so I promise you it was cold AND windy, and that this will come into play again later on.

I went to see his show, Svengali, alone, and sat in my seat for ½ an hour before the show started. I usually do this at the theatre; I like reading the programme in peace and noseying at other people as they come in. I did enjoy absorbing this programme; it was a weird, various interest magazine, styled in an attractive Victorian theme.

The show started and was going as unexpected, until he asked for women who could not paint pictures, but wished they could, to stand up.

I’ve always wanted to paint. Well, truth be told, I’ve always wished for some skill in any visual art. If just one thing that my hands created ended up looking like something other than a multi-coloured bovine placenta I would be utterly fucking thrilled.

So I stood up.

I’m not 100% sure what happened next. Something flew at my face, I ducked and the guy behind me caught it and handed it to me. Then Derren Brown started talking to me from the stage.

By this point, I’d been a Derren Brown fan for a decade and now he was talking to me. Well, he was talking to an unpredictable prop that might mess up a great trick at any minute, but in my world, my hero was talking to me.

Sometimes I imagine talking to my heroes in my head, and I am always incisively erudite. In my imagination, Charles Darwin and I have had some fairly drawn out discussions; frankly the man is just stubborn. When Darwin talks to me, I have opinions and we spark intellectually; when Derren Brown talked to me, I was mainly worried about farting in front of the audience at the Lowry.

Derren beckoned, the audience clapped and I walked towards the stage, my fear of trouser wind worsening with every step as my arse was now head height to the stalls audience and Derren was holding out a microphone. When I reached the stage, I shook his hand, fought the urge to lick his face, and he went about his business of magicking.

If you’ve seen the show, you’ll know the trick I mean. If you haven’t, I’m not going to spoil it. The point of mentioning it at all is that, on stage, I noticed that Derren Brown was an imposing figure of a man. His presence was bear-like, impressively dominant, and he was at least four or five inches taller than me; I’m 5”6”.

The trick ended brilliantly, Derren Brown hugged me, I sniffed his ear a little bit, and we called it a night. I left the stage feeling pleasantly smug and let out an unexposed, sly fart when I got back to my seat.

If only I had left it there.

My need to include fart references throws that last sentence into ambiguity. For clarity, I did not shit myself in the auditorium; what I actually did cost me far more than the embarrassment of public bowel release.

I went to Stage Door to autograph-stalk Derren Brown.

As I have previously bored you with, it was cold and windy and I now was standing outside in the slashing rain waiting to see someone who did not know me and was not expecting to see me. There were about 50 people waiting to see Derren and 40 of them were under girls under 18.

Derren Brown came out and walked straight into the mass of girls. He signed stuff, smiled for cameras and was shunted about like a toy doll between groups of excitedly rabbiting females. I was a little bit scared and stepped out of the crowd. I watched my hero talk to his fans; he was quiet, both softly spoken and sparse with words.

I felt embarrassed, I wanted to leave, but suddenly he was next to me. He had a pen in his hand and he took my open programme.

“Shall I sign it there?”

“Yep. Thanks.”

“What’s your name?” I can’t lie, it did hurt a little that the man who instigated a revolution in my understanding of memory couldn’t remember my three letter name from onstage an hour before.

“Kat.”

“With a K or a C?” This was a man who worked with names, I was one of many K/Cats who he’d signed an arbitrary bit of paper for.

“A ‘K’, please.” I immediately regretted the ‘please’, it sounded like I was implying he might then write a ‘C’ just to be snide. A half competent ‘Blockbusters’ gag went through my head, but instead, I said “I know you’re not a fan of the C.”

I don’t know why I’d say that to a gay man I’d never met before. It’s childish, cheap and offensive; I instantly wished I hadn’t said it, and physically bit my lip to stop myself speaking again. Derren Brown then compounded the whole situation by laughing.

It wasn’t an out loud, belly laugh, but there was a definite chuckle and a bit of a smirk as he scribbled a very legible K next to a lot of squiggle on my programme. His attention was immediately grasped by a small female next to me, and I stood looking at the top of his cap as he signed her something.

Derren Brown is actually just about an inch taller than me.

Derren Brown on stage is my hero, a master of powerful content and precise stagecraft with a thrilling compulsion for detail and infectious excitement about the brain. For years Derren Brown has stimulated my imagination exclusively on my own terms, because before that cold and windy night he was never actually any closer than Darwin, or Beckett, or Freud.

Derren Brown in person is an unassuming chap who giggles at cheap gags, and I dispute my hero’s right to have a personality not entirely created by my own imagination.

In my imagination, my heroes don’t laugh at my childish jokes, and they don’t pay attention to anyone else. I don’t worry about embarrassing myself in front of them and they don’t eat, sleep or have partners. In my imagination, my heroes are all there as the best bits of me and my brain, not to represent the childish, fart-gag side of me; that’s what my friends are for.

In my imagination, my heroes have the role of confidants and moral barometers; they are seats of deep discussions of my worries, fears and passions. My internal world has been a bit damaged by having a real life moment with Derren, and now my subconscious has him hypnotising Hitler to have to say ‘vagina’ instead of ‘Reich’.

My favourite bit about my heroes is that they are exactly who I want to believe they are. I can believe they are unnaturally unique because the only understanding I have of them is built from the bricks of their best ideas, hard work and effort. I have no minute understanding of them as real people because I have no need of that to continue idolising them.

In my imagination, Darwin may be a stubborn bastard, but at least he doesn’t have the audacity to be a real person. 

“Might start trying to buy things how people try to hire me. ‘Can I have an apple? I can’t pay for it, but I’ll tell people the apple’s good’”
@Scriblit via Twitter

That is a funny Tweet, succinctly and grammatically containing a great argument within just 140 characters, a testament to the creative brain and technical writing ability of Scriblit.
Scriblit is a working writer, and when she works, she wants paying; that is, unequivocally, fair.

Right?

It’s bloody hard to make money out of writing. Writing itself is not hard, I’m doing it now, but making money out of it… tough gig. There are many reasons for this, ranging from ‘because you’re shit’ through to ‘millions of people write stuff and try to make money out of it’.

Nearly everybody can actually write, and many people are very competent at it. If you added up the minutes in your day/week/year that you are on the clock and writing something, you could say in that time, you were a ‘working writer’. I estimate mine conservatively as 125.5 hours a year, which is just over three weeks full time work as a writer. Hooray! I’m so glad I stayed in school.

Perhaps if brick laying or engine tuning had been aggressively encouraged by parents and schools instead of writing, then it would be builders and mechanics plying their trade for exposure and credibility whilst writers laid out massive invoices for doing something almost anyone can learn to do.

That absurdity exposes that writers don’t actually want to be paid for the physical act of writing; they want to be paid for a natural ability to have brilliant ideas and the tenacity to couple that with the hard earned craft of turning those ideas into something I can understand. The limit of a builder or mechanic is to keep your house up, or your car running; a well-communicated idea is limitless.

I like to think we know that in our society; there is great work published all the time by respected houses across multiple mediums and the writers are justly compensated for their time and effort. From local newspapers to online blogs, I see the evidence of clever, witty and erudite people who sometimes communicate ideas that shape my mind, and I am pleased they have been paid for that.

Equally, I have encountered some total tosswaffle. Floppy, weakly constructed sentences bouncing aimlessly around ill-considered points and bumping into distorted facts and opinions. It comes from people who think that they are writers and consider their own efforts worthy of monetary payment, when, in fact, fair compensation would be that they get beaten with Sharpies until the offensive, badly punctuated nonsense jiggles out of their densely inflated heads.

It’s not that I want to agree with what I read; I just want to read considered and researched ideas that are explained in a way that respects and develops my language. Good writers do this, and I regularly pay to devour their words. Bad writers muddy issues and damage the way a language I love is written and spoken and read.

I write my tiny blog for pleasure, and because I now know that if someone reads one of my little pieces, it’s not the absolute worst thing out there. I can at least thank the crass thinking, belletristic terrorists lurking with their keyboards and drivel for giving me confidence to squirt my nonsense into text, because I do enjoy it.
I would write a piece for free for anyone who asked me, but the view count of my blog doubles when my mum logs on. I might not be such a typing whore if I was already a featured writer on a website with 2m+ monthly views; I’d want more too.

Our whole economy is based on the principle of me giving you something I’ve got for something else I need.
I don’t need any more exposure, what else have you got? If I refuse exposure and demand money, will you create a paid role, or will you find someone else who will scribble it for free?

Writing can never be exclusive to the monetary economy, so I beg the really good writers not to disappear forever from the unpaid corners of the cultural economy. If there are new websites that have an ethos you support, please drop them a paragraph or five. If there’s a struggling, quality print publication that would benefit from the attention of your current followers, write them a story once or twice. If you really can’t, then do you know a quality writer that will work for the exposure on your recommendation?

I believe it is hard work to consistently produce excellent writing, and that hard work should be paid for. I also believe that good writers have an intangible gift, a natural way of working the language so it changes what you think and who you are. That gift is an incredible stroke of luck.
Getting that lucky gives you a duty to the cultural economy that may not be rewarded at all, let alone with money; your duty is to protect the readers.

The best writers should be moderators we can trust, at the very least.

As a reader, I can’t promise to give up reading work I know is unpaid because I will never lose the fear that paid for written opinions on important topics are those of the commissioner, and not the writer, however paranoid I am told that is.
I can promise to work hard to avoid websites and publications that distribute badly written script and shoddily constructed ideas, but please push back a bit too. It’s a numbers game for readers and the more places that excellent writing appears, the more likely it is we will stumble across it.

If you don’t help, sometimes for free, then the cultural economy will become even more flooded with self-important, fastidiously opinionated, linguistically clumsy waffle from amateur scribes like me. Please be there, because, as a reader, I am genuinely terrified by how far even my own brand of tosswaffle is from the worst kind of writing I find.

The best thing about mobile technology is that it affords me another excuse for looking like a total prick in public. I have many excuses for this, but the simple pleasure of enjoying a one woman silent disco on a tram stop is my current favourite.

On a recent occasion I noticed a very smartly dressed, middle aged woman smiling at me whilst I was bopping along. I saw her lips move, unplugged my ears, and asked her what was up.

“You look like you’re having fun, what are you listening to?” This lady was very, very posh. Her teeth were perfect, sparkly, mouth diamonds.

“Erm… a mix of dubstep that my friend made.” I felt a bit uncomfortable, as if I’d been caught smoking in the grounds of a hospital.

“Oh, yes, the dubstep. My son listens to that, he’s 19.” I cringed. I’m 31 and am becoming more and more aware of the need to grow up.

“Would you like an ear?” I offered my earphone, quite confident she’d say no.

A brief look of contemplation crossed her face. She had the expression of a woman who had recently resolved to try new things and was now faced with the dilemma of living that decision in a very minute and achievable way.

She took the ear phone and looked at it. “I just push it right in my ear?”

“Yes. Not too hard.” And she did.

If you’ve ever shared headphones with anyone, you’ll be aware than you have to stand very close to them. If you’ve ever shared headphones with a stranger, you’ll be aware it’s very weird.

In her designer, heeled boots she was a good four inches taller than stumpy little me and she smelled of wonderful, unaffordable perfume. She blinked and looked confused as the music set to work killing her aural cilia. I felt embarrassed; I wanted to tell her that I am university educated, that I read books, that I watch documentaries and only get involved with dubstep when I think nobody is listening.

The tram came and we shuffled on, still technologically joined by the ear.

“I’m not sure I like it very much.” She said apologetically and a little bit loudly. I laughed and pressed the skip button on my iPod. The next tune up was Perfect Day, sung by Lou Reed. “Oh! I love this one!” She said with genuine joy.

We both stared out the window and listened to Lou Reed, I felt like I was unwittingly putting the moves on a posh lady. I love talking to strangers, but listening to romantic songs whilst sitting with heads tilted together like teenagers… not so much.

Then she started singing along.

At this point, I felt like I had two options. Option one: retract my earphone and move seats. Option two: join in.

I joined in.

A guy reading a Kindle looked at us with annoyance, and we both burst out laughing. It was one of those silly, human moments that you cannot plan and you never forget. As the song finished we approached my stop.

“This is me.” I said, removing my half of the ear phones. She removed hers.

“I enjoyed that, I think I’ll get an iPod for Christmas. I might get some dubsteps on there!” I laughed and extended my hand.

“I’m Kat. Nice to have shared an ear with you!” She shook my hand and told me her name was Louise. I waved at her as the tram pulled away and she waved back enthusiastically.

On Christmas morning, surrounded by my family, I thought about Louise and wondered whether she did actually get an iPod with her son’s music on it.

I expect I’ll never know.