Sian Berry
Anti-4WD campaigner and Green Party candidate for Mayor of London, Sian Berry writes for newstatesman.com
Meet the real Alan Partridge
- Posted by Sian Berry
- 27 November 2006
What do Jeremy Clarkson and Alan Partridge have in common? Well apart from both being failed chatshow hosts, er, plenty!
I’m getting a bit worried about Jeremy Clarkson. No one could enjoy being a figure of hate as much as he appears to, but he can’t seem to stop making new enemies with every column inch he writes.
A while back, I was waiting for my washing in the launderette when I picked up a copy of the Sun. I had a flick through, and eventually reached his column.
In this particular edition he was very wound up by a campaign to get children cycling to school. What could be wrong with such a well-meaning initative? Well Jeremy’s main concern was for the personal hygiene of the adolescents being targeted. He said he told his daughter, “Cycling to school makes your armpits smell and means you won’t get a boyfriend.”
British kids are some of the fattest in Europe, and some of the least likely to get on their bikes of a morning, so suggesting that cyclists are unable to pull is a bit far fetched. After footballers (men) and gymnasts (women), the cyclists overtaking me in Hyde Park in the morning have some of the best legs I’ve ever seen – and of course on your bike other people are actually able to appreciate the tone of your legs, unlike when you’re sitting in your 4x4 stuffing chocolate in your face.
Presumably our pitifully low rate of school cycling (4% vs 60% in Denmark) is at least partly because parents would rather avoid their loved ones being run over by one of Jeremy’s disciples. In July 2005 he issued the following advice to new cyclists who were avoiding public transport after the London bombs: “Do not pull up at junctions in front of a line of traffic. Because if I'm behind you, I will set off at normal speed and you will be crushed under my wheels."
Alright, so we can sort of expect a motoring journalist to have a thing about greens, and I didn’t take it that badly when he suggested I might need to ‘get a job’ when our 4x4 campaign featured in the other newspaper where he has a column, the Sunday Times. But he does seem to be addicted to offending the sane and the sensible, one group at a time.
As well as cyclists, homosexuals, the police, caravanners etc, etc, Jeremy’s ire sometimes extends to whole cities, in particular Norwich. He has said people should avoid it unless they like, "orgies and the ritual slaying of farmyard animals.”
Why pick on Norwich? Well, apart from the nine-strong Green group on the City Council, and the fact that it was recently assessed as the greenest town in the UK - due to things like the number of eco-friendly businesses - I wonder if it isn’t because Jeremy Clarkson is worried he is turning into Norwich’s own Alan Partridge.
There are certainly some uncanny similarities between the careers of the two buffoons. Both started out in male-dominated journalistic niches (sport for Partridge, motoring for Clarkson), and they have both presented embarrassing, discontinued chat shows on the BBC. Partridge is of course a fictional character but both have also affected the car market in the real world. Clarkson with his decade-long and successful campaign to drive Rover out of business, and Partridge by once calling Lexus cars by the plural ‘Lexi’, which caused an immediate drop in sales of the luxury brand.
I’m a scientist by training (my engineering degree is real!) so let’s test this hypothesis properly with my own version of the Turing test (this holds that if a real person can carry on a conversation with an artificial brain without being able to tell it’s not another real person, then you have achieved artificial intelligence).
I therefore present a series of quotes below on a range of random subjects. All are either by Clarkson or Partridge. Which is which? You decide…
“Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, a song in which Joni complains that they 'paved paradise to put up a parking lot', a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion on the outskirts of paradise, something which Joni singularly fails to point out, because it doesn't quite fit with her blinkered view of the world.”
“Only last week I was at my children's sports day and as I lay in the long grass by the river drinking pink champagne and chatting with other media parents, I remember thinking, 'God, I love being middle class'”
“Crab Sticks do not actually contain any crab at all, and since 1993 have had to be labelled Crab Flavoured Sticks”
“I pride myself on the fact I don’t cry over films — apart from Educating Rita, obviously.”
“Flatley my dear, I don’t riverdance.”
“So, bus lanes. What I don't understand is why poor people need to get somewhere more than the rest of us.”
“Is he going to get any petrol? No he's using the forecourt to turn around... he thinks he's Rod Stewart!”
"What's wrong with global warming? We might lose Holland but there are other places to go on holiday,"
“It's pouring down with rain because not enough people have Range Rovers.”
“If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater. If they could afford to emigrate then they could afford to eat in a modest restaurant.”
“If this were America, it would be full of people doing... whatever it is they do. Incest, mostly, I think.”
“The only man I know who wears slippers on the street is called Dougie. He wanders round Norwich shopping precinct with a Cornish pasty in his hand, shouting "get away. It's a bomb!" He's insane.”
“The only homeless people I ever see are rather frightening looking Scottish men who prowl the streets of Soho with their angry dogs begging for money. “Eat the dog. Then we’ll talk,” is what I always say.”
“I suppose the only humane way to kill a bird of prey is death by firing squad.”
“The BBC is riddled, top to bottom, with communists. They pretend to be Liberal Democrats, but they're really closet communists.”
So can you tell me who said what?
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