Instances When Jeremy Clarkson Has Had To Run Away From An Angry Mob

Jeremy Clarkson is one of the most talented television presenters in the world, and he is credited for making Top Gear the most-watched motoring show in the world. However, his time while working with the show was riddled with controversy, with the last one being an assault on one the show’s producer’s, leading to Clarkson’s dismissal.

Jeremy Clarkson is also fond of making shocking controversial remarks. For example, he in 2009 stated that television networks were obsessed with hiring black, Muslim lesbians as presenters to apparently balance out their white, heterosexual, male counterparts. This was while responding to a query as to why Top Gear had no female presenters. The following was the statement as reported by Guardian.

“The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blond-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian. Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works. But here we have Top Gear setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them.”

He also went on to highlight in one of his columns that there should be more female racing drivers, as there was really no difference in skill between the sexes. The following was his statement:

“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 differences. At work, girls are just people. It’s the same story at parties and it’s especially the same on the road. The worst driver in the world is Top Gear’s studio director… He cannot park without kerbing the wheels and he cannot get into his own drive without crashing into his house. And he has a scrotum.”

In 2011, he also made some racist comments about Mexicans, saying that the cars they build reflect their national characteristics. The following was his statement, according to Reuters.

“Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat… That’s why we won’t get any complaints about this because at the Mexican embassy the ambassador’s going to be sitting there with a remote control like this [Pretends to be snoring]”

Unlucky for Jeremy Clarkson and his co-presenters, the Mexican ambassador wasn’t snoring, and he soon launched a complaint against the BBC, demanding a public apology.

That said, there have been instances where people offended by Jeremy Clarkson have not been so composed as to demand for apologies and rather made their displeasure known through violence. The most recent incident was in 2014 when the Top Gear crew was chased out of Argentina by an angry mob. This was after Jeremy Clarkson drove a Porsche featuring a number plate that seemed to reference the Falklands invasion of 1982 – H982 FKL. The crew was attacked while staying at Hotel Arakur after a day of filming. The following is an account of the events of that day, according to Jeremy Clarkson:

“We knew absolutely nothing about the number plate, it was just an unbelievable coincidence. I swear on my kids’ lives… When we saw people on Twitter getting upset we took the plate off. But they still attacked us so we made a break for it to our hotel in Ushuaia.”

Below is a video of the incident.

In another incident, the Top Gear crew was pelted with stones after painting offensive messages on their cars in season nine of the car show. This was while filming in Alabama. The following is the video.

[Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images]