Do we like Jeremy Clarkson?
Our score: 3 out of 10. A press regulator found one column sexist and another drew fierce criticism, with real good in his farming advocacy and some apologies, so he sits at the bottom of the middle.
Clarkson spent decades as the face of Top Gear, a show built on a bloke saying the quiet bit loudly. That brand of provocation made him rich and famous, and it has also kept him in strife ever since. These days he's mostly known as a Cotswolds farmer on Clarkson's Farm, which Prime Video brought back for a fifth season this year.
The big stoush came in 2015, when the BBC dropped him from Top Gear after he punched a producer in a dispute at the end of a filming day. The producer took legal action, and in early 2016 the claim was settled out of court, with Clarkson apologising. It shows a temper and a sense that the rules were for other people, though he did front up and settle.
The Meghan saga is the one most people remember. His December 2022 Sun column, since deleted, said he hated the Duchess of Sussex and wanted to see her “made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain.” It drew more than 20,000 complaints to the press regulator, and Ipso later ruled it discriminated against her as a woman. He said “I really am sorry,” though the Sussexes dismissed his apology.
On the harm check, his record is uneven. His 2016 Sunday Times column on trans issues argued that parents “must not be allowed to poison the mind of a child”, and it was slammed by Matt Lucas and others as transphobic. In 2019 Will Young called a Grand Tour segment bigoted. Clarkson replied in his Sun column that he isn't homophobic, and said he would apologise to Young for upsetting him. That's a pattern of jokes and columns that land hard on people, but we found no campaign against anyone's rights.
The recent news is on-brand. At the Tory conference he joked the hall was thin, saying “Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now?” and blaming the Labour government's family farms tax, which was watered down last December. Appearing on a party stage isn't membership, and where you land depends on whether you read it as farmers' champion or a rich bloke's gripe.
The good stuff is real, if thin on charity. He has been a loud, high-profile voice for British farmers, and Clarkson's Farm has put the realities of farm life in front of a huge audience. We didn't find a documented charity programme, and that's honestly the whole list.