The World According to Clarkson - Hardcover

Clarkson, Jeremy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718147308 ISBN 13: 9780718147303

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2004

Synopsis

The world is an exciting and confusing place for Jeremy Clarkson - a man who can find the overgrown schoolboy in us all. In The World According to Clarkson, one of the country's funniest comic writers has free reign to expose absurdity, celebrate eccentricity and entertain richly in the process. And the net is cast wide: from the chronic unsuitablity of men to look after children for long periods or as operators of 'white goods', Nimbyism, cricket and PlayStations, to astronomy, David Beckham, 70's rock, the demise of Concorde, the burden of an Eton education and the shocking failure of Tom Clancy to make it on to the Booker shortlist, The World According to Clarkson is a hilarious snapshot of the life in the 21st century that will have readers wincing with embarrassed recognition and crying with laughter. It's not about the cars!

About this title

About the Author:

Jeremy Clarkson made his name presenting a poky motoring programme on BBC2 called Top Gear. He left to forge a career in other directions but made a complete hash of everything and ended up back on Top Gear again. He lives with his wife, Francie, and three children in Oxfordshire. Despite this he has a clean driving licence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Another Day’s Holiday? Please, Give Me a Break
According to a poll, the vast majority of people questionedas they struggled back to work last week thoughtthat England should have followed Scotland’s lead andmade Tuesday a bank holiday.Two things strike me as odd here. First, that anyonecould be bothered to undertake such research and,second, that anyone in their right mind could think thatthe Christmas break was in some way too short.I took ten days off and by 11 o’clock on the first morningI had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all thenewspapers and the Guardian and then . . . and then what?By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang afew pictures. So I found a hammer, and later a man cameto replaster the bits of wall I had demolished. Then Itried to fix the electric gates, which work only whenthere’s an omega in the month. So I went down thedrive with a spanner, and later another man came to putthem back together again.I was just about to start on the Aga, which had brokendown on Christmas Eve, as they do, when my wife tookme on one side by my earlobe and explained that buildersdo not, on the whole, spend their spare time writing, sowriters should not build on their days off. It’s expensiveand it can be dangerous, she said. She’s right. We have these lights in the dining roomwhich are supposed to project stars onto the table below.It has never really bothered me that the light seeps outof the sides so the stars are invisible; but when you arebored, this is exactly the sort of thing that gets on yournerves.So I bought some gaffer tape and suddenly my life hada purpose. There was something to do.Mercifully, Christmas intervened before I could doany more damage, but then it went away again and oncemore I found myself staring at the day through the wrongend of a pair of binoculars. Each morning, bed and theblessed relief of unconsciousness seemed so far away.I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless tripsto the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehowmissed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided tobuy a footstool.I took the entire family to the sort of gifty-wifty shopwhere the smell of pot-pourri is so pungent that it makesyou go cross-eyed. Even though the children were lyingon the floor gagging, I still spent hours deliberatelychoosing a footstool that was too small and the wrongcolour so that I could waste some more time taking itback.The next day, still gently redolent of Delia Smith’sknicker drawer, I decided to buy the wrong sort ofantique filing cabinet. But after the footstool debacle mywife said no. So it seemed appropriate that I shoulddevelop some kind of illness. This is a good idea whenyou are at a loose end because everything, up to andincluding herpes, is better than being bored.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0718147308
• ISBN 13: 9780718147303
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256