Clarkson!

Picture: Amazon

Sometimes in the culture wars, events contrive to create the perfect storm. In the case of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Harry and Meghan, to you and me - the storm is a permanent state of enragement, much like that giant red cyclone near the equator of Jupiter.

For one newspaper in particular - obviously, the Daily Mail - it is ever-present. On any given day there are four or five stories about Harry, or Meghan, or both. At the height of the furore over Harry’s memoir Spare, you’d be lucky to find coverage of anything else. In recent days, though, the Mail’s apparent obsession with the Sussexes has died down to just four or five new stories a day. That, though, is still tempered by an injection of beatific pieces about Harry’s brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales. It has been a prominent feature of the British media's editorial polarity that picture stories of the ever-smiling Catherine, her heir-to-the-throne husband and their adorable children get prominence in contrast to the prevailingly negative coverage of Harry and Meghan. Don’t tell me there isn’t an agenda going on there…

Back in December, before Spare came out, and in the wake of the royal couple’s exorcising Netflix series, Jeremy Clarkson stuck his size 14s in by writing a wholly offensive column for The Sun in which he suggested that Meghan should be paraded naked through the streets of Britain while having excrement flung at her by the public. He wasn't, to the best of anyone's knowledge, being literal, but in that oh-so Clarksonesque way, it was a clumsy reference to a scene from Game Of Thrones with which to emphasise the “hate” - his word – he had for the duchess “on a cellular level”. To hammer home his disdain, Clarkson placed the duchess above Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and even serial killer Rose West. Needless to say, the shit-slinging idea went down well with people on Twitter called “Daz” or “Barry” who suffix their handles with Cross of St. George flags, and whose timelines are regularly peppered with sentiment supportive of topics such as Brexit, defunding the BBC and bringing back Boris. Basically, anything starting with the letter b. 

This is the Clarkson fan base: ‘real blokes’ who like cars, football and probably still bemoan the disappearance of The Sun’s Page Three “stunnah”, which was, of course, always only “a bit of fun” and in no way a daily dose of sexist titillation (with the emphasis on “tit” – phwoar!). These are the self-styled anti-woke warriors, who feed - and feed off - the Daily Mail’s constant chuntering about anything remotely liberal, contriving a culture war angle out of anything. So, far from merely tolerating his occasional sexism and casual racism on Top Gear, Clarkson’s core demographic have fully bought into his reactionary schtick. Which means the egregious column he wrote in December was probably regarded by most of his following as grist to the mill.

Not so, everyone else. Within a matter of days the column had attracted a record 25,000 complaints to the press regulator Ipso. As a pile-on ensued, an apparently chastened Clarkson tweeted: “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game Of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.” 

It wasn’t enough. Even to his daughter Emily. “My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.”

The broad view agreed. Clarkson senior had been deeply misogynist. Questions were asked of the editorial governance at The Sun to have allowed the column to have run in the first place, with former Sun editor Neil Wallis calling it a “dreadful failure of editing.” Immediately, questions arose as to the reputational damage Clarkson had done to the broadcasters who employ him, although while Kevin Lygo, ITV’s media and entertainment boss, described the column as “awful”, he said there were no plans to replace him as presenter of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. Amazon, which has paid Clarkson several millions to front the son-of-Top Gear, The Grand Tour, and the reality series Clarkson’s Farm, was less ambiguous. Described by Clarkson himself as “incandescent” over The Sun piece, the streaming service was reported by entertainment industry trade rag Variety as “cutting their ties” with the controversial presenter. This, in turn, set off the likes of the Daily Mail and its readers who predictably accused those offended by Clarkson of ‘cancelling’ the 62-year-old manchild. Except that he hasn’t, yet.

In fact, the Variety story said that it was only “likely” that Amazon would part ways with Clarkson, and following “the conclusion of existing agreements.” Those include one more series of The Grand Tour and two of Clarkson’s Farm. That will mean Clarkson remains onscreen with Amazon for at least the next two years. But, as we know with the tabloids’ obsession with woke-bashing, don’t let such practicalities get in the way of a good story.

Amazon has remained quiet on Clarkson’s future, although a “senior figure” connected with the company told the Telegraph that such talk of the presenter being cancelled because of his column in The Sun was “nonsense”. Another pointed out that Clarkson’s brand of gobshite controversy was hardly in the same league of offence-causing as some of the books Amazon sells, like Mein Kampf, or documentary series on Prime about serial killers. Actually, the storm only emboldens Clarkson’s brand. Ever since he started using strained metaphors in the ‘old’ Top Gear about cars “snapping knicker elastic”, he knowingly self-cultivated an image of being television’s actual Alan B’Stard, who comes out with mildly reactionary things just to get a rise. Boo!

It worked. Top Gear 2.0, with Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, became a juvenile version of Last Of The Summer Wine, pushing the tolerance envelope with obviously scripted routines that portrayed the trio as a group of overgrown schoolboys, rather than middle-aged motoring journalists. That was until the “slope” reference in a film the trio made in Thailand which was, we were assured, a statement about a camera angle. I don’t think the Thai gentleman in shot would have been amusedThe last straw, for the BBC, at least, came with Clarkson being sacked for punching a Top Gear producer while on location after being told that the crew’s hotel couldn’t prepare a late night steak for him.

Picture: Amazon

Thus, Amazon spent £160 million on luring Clarkson & Co over to Prime to develop The Grand Tour which was, blatantly, Top Gear 2.5. Same presenters, same schtick, same demographic. Except – and this gets to the bottom of Amazon’s possible tie-cutting - the blokeish Clarkson/May/Hammond humour is intrinsically British and, even then, quite narrow. The Telegraph revealed this week that Prime has around 200 million viewers worldwide, with three-quarters of them in America. In Britain, where The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm will more or less exclusively resonate, Amazon can only command 12 million subscribers. All of a sudden, £160 million seems an awful lot of money. As the GT trio found with old-TG, their form of irony doesn’t always work in America. Clarkson’s Farm, too, is probably regarded as parochial (even though it is, actually, genuinely entertaining), but US ratings for it have been particularly poor. And with any poorly performing TV property, if it doesn’t rate, it gets the chop.

The beginning-of-the end for Clarkson on Amazon is, then, pure coincidence. But that won’t keep him out of the headlines. Last week it was revealed that he e-mailed Prince Harry on Christmas Day to apologise for his Sun column, saying that his language had been “disgraceful” and he was “profoundly sorry”. A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan were less than impressed: “While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr. Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long-standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories and misogyny. Unless each of his other pieces were also written ‘in a hurry’ [as he apparently stated] it is clear that this is not an isolated incident shared in haste, but rather a series of articles shared in hate.”

Clarkson has, of course, not been cancelled. He will continue presenting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV - for now - though the network has not confirmed anything more than another series. The Sun still employs him, though his columns have been conspicuously absent, and he still has a weekly appearance in The Sunday Times. So, no, the enfante terrible hasn’t succumbed to the tofu-eating wokerati. But maybe a period of abstinence - not just by Clarkson but the rest of the reactionary commentariat constantly searching for a new club to break over Harry and Meghan’s heads - might do us all some good.

Fathoming out the royal psychodrama

Picture: Apple TV/The Me You Can't See

What a mess. What an absolute mess. Forget the recriminations over Martin Bashir’s now-rogue Panorama interview with Princess Diana, with the BBC lurching into an existential crisis of its own doing. It’s the royal family I worry about.

Perhaps the mainstream media doesn’t, in its capricious relationship with the monarchy - a press owned by republican barons who feed off the royals’ misfortunes while fuelling them at the same time. With the Bashir scandal, a number of them have found themselves observers of a perfect storm, the opportunity to whip up right-wing frenzy over the BBC itself (the same old tropes about political bias and the licence fee), while more gorging at the never-ending feast that is the psychodrama within the House of Windsor. That began, arguably, when a young Diana Spencer met Prince Charles at a polo match in the summer of 1980. That set in train a sequence of events that, to take a gloomy view, would end with her death at the age of 36 in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, and continue further as her sons grew up and, in the case of the youngest, became a target himself for media anger, rather than a recipient of sympathy.

The contrast in reporting has become polarised: Prince William and “Kate Middleton” (never the Duchess of Cambridge) are the wholesome, perma-smiling poster children of the monarchy’s future, with three delightful children and the right balance of working life and family life. Prince Harry and “Meghan Markle” (never the Duchess of Sussex) are spoiled and entitled, who’ve escaped royal duty and decamped to California where they carp and moan about how pitiful life in the Royal Family is, and how they’ve had to escape institutional dysfunction and racism to make the life they desire. That, I think, sums up the narrative.

The latest spin in the Sussex vortex is Harry’s revelations about his mental health to Oprah Winfrey, in essence, a continuation of the interview he and Meghan gave in March, but this time going into far more detail. So much more detail that Piers Morgan has compounded his apparent ongoing feud with the couple (which may or may not be rooted in Meghan allegedly spurning his invite for a drink some time back) which led to him calling Harry a “whiny little brat”. You don’t dare look at the comments beneath Morgan’s diatribes in the Mail Online, which amount to a national pile-on against Harry and his wife. There is no compelling evidence that the ire Meghan draws is racial in motivation, but you can’t help have your suspicions. Either way, she is seen as some poisonous gold digger, who stole a hitherto popular prince away from us. And how dare Harry cause so much pain to his grandmother and father, and indeed break up the once solid sibling duo with William? All of a sudden, Harry - who fought for his country and has admitted that he was probably at his happiest in the army - is being demonised…for what?

In the new interviews with Winfrey, Harry - speaking eloquently and without any of the histrionics he’s been painted as applying - opens up about the depths both he and his wife have been through, accusing the royal family of treating Meghan with “total neglect” when she was suicidal, and he has used drink and drugs to mask the pain of his mother’s tragic death. What is clear, and what those who criticise Harry seem to refuse to acknowledge, is just how deep the effect of Diana’s death, when he was just 11, has had on him. Which begs the question - who has the right to question that? Even his revelation that Meghan didn’t go through with suicide while pregnant with Archie was because she thought it unfair on him “after everything that had happened to my mum and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her — our baby.” He added that Meghan persuaded him to go into therapy to address his demons - again, further fuel to the anti-Meghan brigade - as he says that he found life a nightmare, especially living in London, before he met his wife, because of the painful memories of his mother at every turn.

You can see his point or, at least, should. And you can see why Morgan, once a tabloid newspaper editor (let’s gloss over the Mirror front page scandal that he was ultimately responsible for...) is going to go for the attention Harry finds so traumatic, recalling how, as a young boy, sat in the back of his mother’s car, he saw how she was in tears while being pursued by press photographers, a darkly prescient event in itself: “The clicking of cameras and the flash of cameras makes my blood boil,” he tells Winfrey. “It makes me angry. It takes me back to what happened to my mum, what I experienced as a kid.”

Harry also reveals that Prince Charles’ own treatment of him hasn’t helped. “My father used to say to me [and William] when I was younger, ‘Well it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’.” Charles, as The Crown appears to depict, was a somewhat morose child as he tried to figure out his place in the world as future king, in a family with cold emotion running through it, and a household of courtiers adding to the atmosphere with their institutional stuffiness. Harry’s revelations about his own father come at little surprise, but at least he’s being honest in talking about them, even if it risks the rift with his brother, who dutifully doesn’t speak about family strife, being prolonged.

I only lost my father, at the age of 90, to Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago, so I couldn’t begin to empathise with how an 11-year-old Harry must have confronted the death of Diana, at the same age he is now. More so, how he would have confronted it within the refined world of the royal family. “I wish she could have met Meghan,” he reflects to Winfrey, “I wish she was around for Archie.” You’d have to have a heart of stone to not find that statement sad. But, I think, you’d also have to have a heart of stone for not having sympathy for where Harry has ended up, and why - to his own admission - he made the decision to leave royal life and chart his own course in California. And, again, here he presents another stick for critics to beat him with. ‘It’s all very well Harry wanting out,’ runs the line, ‘but he’s still trading on his title’. Well, yes, true. But can you really blame him?

The arguments over Harry’s royal status could go on all day, but I keep coming back to the central premise of his appearance in Winfrey’s new series, The Me You Can’t See, which he also co-produced, for Apple+: at its core seems to be the continued inability for people to accept mental health issues to begin with, and secondly, that someone born into privilege, who has benefitted supremely from that privilege, has any right to struggle. “Poor, poor, pitiful me,” to reference the Warren Zevon song. “Whiny little brat” indeed. We stray, here, into the British predilection for indulging the politics of envy. Harry wants his cake and eat it, but does he not - as any bereaved son should - deserve some slack? Or is he just supposed to ‘man up’, the stock response to any weakness?

If, though, we are to take mental health more seriously, as we should, the criticism Harry has faced for opening up has been astonishing. As psychologist Wendy Bristow points out in The Times today, he’s faced accusations of whingeing, even from mental health professionals. And yet, she argues, despite greater public awareness of mental health problems, especially amongst men, Harry’s state is dismissed as weakness or, with another angle on his public image, wokery. I’m squarely with Bristow in her advocacy of therapy, which Harry tells Winfrey has been an essential part of coping. I went through it myself, a few years ago when dealing with combination of challenges. In the way I usually equate things with pop culture, I felt that if Tony Soprano could get therapy, then so could I. How much it materially helped, I couldn’t say, but it was certainly good to talk. 

Unfortunately, Harry is clearly not being given the respite his confessional to Winfrey might seek to achieve. A look at the Mail’s landing page sees him plastered across it. Countless stories, countless angles, and all the usual bovver boys steaming in with their why-oh-why think pieces. Helicopter up, and we see Harry featuring in a timeline of royal schism that shows no end. I do sympathise with the Queen at having to deal with all this, especially having only buried her husband a month ago. To some extent, I sympathise with Charles, too, though, as the rogue Bashir interview with Diana revealed, he doesn’t come out of things with much dignity. But I do respect Harry for wanting to do something about the “cycle of pain” of his own upbringing with his own children. “I don't think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody,” he told podcaster Dax Shepard recently, “but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I've experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I'm going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don't pass it on, basically.” In the interview he lucidly talked through where he was coming from: “It's a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on,” adding that he’d started to piece it all together from his father’s schooldays (miserably captured in The Crown), to the chain of events that occurred when his parents met, and he came into the world. 

I’m no flag-waving, bunting-stringing, street party-attending royalist, but I do like the royal institution. I think that it has a place in British society that is positive, for the most part, makes people smile. That Prince Harry’s commentary about himself and his family may be undermining the institution is open to debate, but perhaps it’s the revolution the royal family finally needed. In the grand scheme of regal schisms, dating back centuries, this is - to some extent - just a rift. Those who passionately take the red-white-and-blue bunting view of it all will still enjoy seeing the Queen on Zoom calls with Scout troops, Charles making his impassioned comments about the environment, and even William doing his earnest work with “Kate”, presenting a softer, more modern, chino-wearing profile for ‘The Firm’. But maybe, just maybe, we should cut Harry some slack. Because, hasn’t he been through enough?

One of the herd

A few days ago the Mail Online - as it does - devoted two reporters to the earth-shattering story that HRH Prince Harry had been seen wearing the same pair of blue chinos three days running. The very thought!

Now, firstly, you must wonder whether there were more pressing stories going on in the world that day - you know, the prospect of nuclear annihilation in the Korean peninsular springs to mind - but evidently this was worthy of the headline you read above, along with the qualifying details that H was in Toronto for the Invictus Games, of which he is patron and figurehead, that his Dockers cost £70, and that he "appeared" to wear them for three days "despite 27C temperatures" (particularly puzzling, since the wearing of comfortable cotton trousers in 27 degrees shouldn't really be a bad thing).

Without wishing to add unnecessary oxygen to such tabloid nonsense, chinos are clearly de rigeur for our young male royals. Harry's elder brother William is, these days, rarely seen in anything else. Fashion commentators and royal watchers with little else to write about will say that the princes have adopted a "more relaxed" fashion style than, say, their father who was wearing double-breasted suits while still in nursery school.

They are, however, simply reflecting what has become a uniform in London - which is what has prompted this post: during my lunch break today I was somewhat overwhelmed by the fact that men in the City of London - yes, even that preserve of stuffy, besuited bankers - have appropriated en masse blue chinos and brown brogues as a default. It's a look that is suitably casual without feeling too far removed from the conventions of suit wearing, while not straying into 'smart hippy' land with jeans (a look appropriated by middle aged executives in the tech industry).

I, too, am a wearer of the blue-chinos-and-brown-brogues combo. However, I would like to put it out there that this isn't out of following the herd as they simply make a very pleasing colour combination. Chinos do, though, carry a certain tag: in the early days of that ridiculous concept 'Casual Friday' it simply meant that those who'd normally be dressed in grey or navy suits from Monday to Thursday put on a pair of khaki chinos for the final day of the working week. When I worked in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s, Casual Friday could easily have been renamed 'Beige Friday', such was the ubiquity of khaki Dockers.

The Dutch, too, embraced the trend, and by the time I'd moved back to Amsterdam in 2003, local men were flinging off - metaphorically speaking - their dull business suits for chinos, albeit with a somewhat disturbing tendency towards vibrant hues like pink, yellow and orange, a look also appropriated by those named Tarquin who live in Clapham.

The rules of officewear are being constantly tested. First there was the mass abandonment of ties (recently given the green light in the Houses of Parliament, no less) and then the appearance of 'smart' jeans, as worn by the dad-dancing titans of the technology world. I've attended press events with my own company in which spotting the divide between American and European executives is easy - it's those in jeans versus those in suits. Chinos, however, have remained resilient staples, as fashion writers are prone to inform us. Born in the 1950s as a preppy uniform for Ivy Leaguers, they now provide us chaps with something to be worn on almost any occasion, and if you're economising on travel luggage (not that Prince Harry would have been flying Ryanair...), it's the legwear that keeps on delivering, most days of your trip.