Anne: My drugs shame

11 April 2012

So, what do you think of the changes to the page, then? Norbert Dentressangle is less of a mouthful than Victor Lewis-Smith (I blame my hyphen - I'm hoping to have it removed by electrolysis on the NHS, but despite what Tony B. Liar says, the waiting list is horrendous), and I'm sure you'll agree that the headline is more arresting than usual, albeit entirely without foundation.

We are trying out other ways of freshening up the column too, including publishing some copies with a lucky £5 note stuck to my face (unluckily for you, this copy isn't one of them), and recent technological advances here at Northcliffe House mean I'll soon be able to incorporate a special scratch 'n' sniff section, allowing you to experience celebrity odours in your very own home.

So look out for next Monday's column, which will offer you a whiff of my own armpits, followed later in the week by the great smell of Vanessa Feltz's Charlie (it's a perfume from the Seventies - what did you think I meant?).

Sadly, we couldn't get the scratch 'n' sniff technology to work on today's photo of Jeremy Clarkson, but had we done so your olfactory sensors would now be saturated with a powerful combination of Old Spice and Brut Soap on a Rope.

The man is trapped in the Seventies, and just as today's revamped column has still ultimately left you with dull old me, so the recent major retread given to BBC2's Top Gear was doomed to failure, because they didn't get rid of the presenter, even though he's decades past his sell-by date.

Even as I write, I suspect he's standing in front of his bedroom mirror with a tennis racket, miming to an Allman Brothers guitar solo, and his on-screen persona depends on a sneering, adolescent arrogance that isn't underpinned by the necessary talent.

Indeed, with his Alan Partridgelike lack of self-awareness, he's reminiscent of a special-needs boy who's still in the sixth form, telling us far more than we need to know about his one specialist subject - the internal combustion engine - and generally spouting a load of old Wankel (Rotary).

Even though the programme's audience-based format is ostensibly new, it too derives from the Seventies, being a combination of Tomorrow's World and That's Life! (right down to the Keiran Prendiville clone who acts as sidekick).

The hour-long show is now recorded close to transmission, yet a handful of topical references in last Sunday's edition couldn't disguise the truth that the "latest" Volvos and Vauxhalls on display were little different from last year's models, and that most of the "new" gadgets had been on the shelves at Maplin for the past two years.

As ever, the locker room banter was obsessed with how quickly the cars would go from nought to 60 (when what ought to be discussed was how quickly these two-tonne urban weapons can go from 60 to nought), and inordinate delight was expressed at Tory proposals to abolish the M4 bus lane and get rid of speed bumps.

Incidentally, I agree with that last proposal, because in my experience, those so-called "speed bumps" are completely useless, and actually slow you down.

But cars took second place to Clarkson, who used the increased programme length to run the full gamut of his mind-crashingly dull, yobbish Seventies sexism, xenophobia and homophobia.

The Dutch were all gay, he inferred, and the Swedes were all boring, while the preferences of women drivers simply didn't matter, and he introduced one vehicle as "the new Mazda, complete with Japanese bird poo and Sars" (that was the Chinks, Jeremy, not the Japs - surely you remember being told in the playground that the eye slits go up, not down?).

Unless the audience consisted entirely of ventriloquists, much of the laughter must have been dubbed over shots of their deadpan, tight-lipped faces, and it's clear that the public in 2003 are no longer responding to the kneejerk prejudices of someone who's just too old to be an angry young man.

Indeed, nowadays he's more of a rebel without a corset, a human toffee apple trying to squeeze his fortysomething mind and body into the lifestyle (and the Levis) of a twentysomething.

When the BBC2 continuity announcer sounds depressed at the start of a programme, you suspect there's something fundamentally wrong, and there is. Clarkson's anachronistic presence on the channel is no longer merely tedious, it's embarrassing (surely there must be a niche for him somewhere on Granada Men and Motors?), and the sooner that Jane Root puts him out of our misery, the better.

His vocal delivery is as dated as Smashy and Nicey, and although he clearly believes that surrounding himself with slim young colleagues will make him seem slim and young, too, that ruse fails whenever you catch sight of the human toffee apple in profile, and notice that he looks five months gone.

Speaking of which, I overheard a whisper yesterday about another celebrity who really is five months gone, and I'll share their identity with you, so long as you keep the news to yourself. Promise?

All right, then, I'll reveal who it is. Maurice Gibb.

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Anne: My drugs shame

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