Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Discuss 20

'Shakespeare? I'd rather stick pencils in my eyes!'

Jeremy Clarkson

14 comments:

  1. Oh, I think he should require no excuse to stick pencils in his eyes. The way 'Top Gear' has come to dominate UK culture is depressingly familiar: take a popular concept – a politically incorrect, anti-environmental, male-orientated show presented by three middle age guys – and sell it on the highstreet to every car-jacking knuckle driving a modded Renault Clio.

    Richard 'Hamster' Hammond has managed to take the nation's goodwill and jam it so far down our throats that we'll think twice about giving sympathy to the next celebrity involved in a high speed crash. Is there nothing he won't sell? No programme he won't present? No excremental publishing idea he won't agree to adorn with his wrinkled mug?

    I think I need to have a lie down...

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  2. If you think their is more human greatness in Lancia than The Tempest then I'd happily do it for you Jeremy. More proof, were it needed, of the ascendance of the barbarians who now dominate much of our media. I like to think James May wouldn't have been so crass though.

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  3. But does he sell more books a year than Shakie? He might. If so, then he must be right.

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  4. What would Shakespeare have made of Jeremy, now that is a question.

    (Answer: a pencil holder?)

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  5. I like the description of Clarkson by the great William Donaldson: 'In all obvious respects he's Richard Littlejohn, without, perhaps, Littlejohn's wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and tolerance of opinions with which he is out of sympathy.'

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  6. Top Gear is just pantomime. Clarkson and May in particular are far too savvy not to know exactly what they are doing. If folks choose to take it all seriously, either from high-mindedness or from simple laddishness, well there is no law against stupidity.

    So I say, "Welcome, Barbarians." It is only members of the awkward squad who offer relief from the tedium of political correctness, health and safety et al.

    I don't know the context of the quote, but there are quite a few things any sane person would prefer to do instead of reading Shakespeare, perhaps. So what's all the fuss about? Or, as the man didn't say, "Mine eye hath play'd the painter and Stella'd / The Lambo's form in table of my heart".

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  7. As has been pointed out Clarkson knows better but we really have to assess what is before us (and bouts of egomania can halve your intelligence). Boorish playing to the gallery--the Clarkson (lucrative) persona.

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  8. How could we expect anything different from AA Gills friend.

    Willie has just added overweight balding petrolheads with a bad taste in clothes to the list containing lawyers.

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  9. I know it's snobby, but I can't help it. Clarkson is the very model of the Minor Public School type: boorish, blindly convinced of his own correctness, and a dull and humourless bully.

    My son, though, loves him. But what can you expect from a teenager?

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  10. And a Denier to boot, Recusant.

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  11. He may of course have a point and one where the theory of don't shoot the messenger may not be applicable.
    How many of us have sat in excruciating discomfort through yet another Taming of the Shrew acted out by the schools budding luvvies or the local drama society's librarians and teachers, not to mention the allegedly professional stage and film actors versions, think Taylor and Taffy, oh boy if in doubt, overact.

    Mind you, Catwoman and Ally McBeal did a tasty Midsummer Night.

    Another peachy messenger was Britten's version of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, sort of singalongawillie.

    So, Jemmy sweetie, if poking the lights out eases your pain, think of the therapeutic effect it would have upon us.

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  12. I knew I raised my 17 year old daughter correctly when I found her reading Macbeth for fun. The two of us were almost in tears watching Kenneth Branagh giving the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;"

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  13. I'd rather stick pencils in Jeremy Clarkson's eyes.

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  14. I don't watch too much American TV, never mind British, so I did not know of Jeremy Clarkson. But I did find out about his one-eyed Gordon Brown remark through YouTube.

    But what a tragic scene that would be, tragic, to be almost on your way to see King Lear, to go to see if Jeremy is ready yet, only to find that he has gouged his eyes with a pencil in front of his mirror.

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