Eat my spoiler! (Born to Be Riled - Jeremy Clarkson)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Born to Be Riled - Jeremy Clarkson
Date:	31/07/07 (326 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny bits

Disadvantages: Too long

Just as Richard & Judy’s Book Club will get your tome or novel in the national top ten book charts if it’s featured on their Channel Four show, however good the read, Jeremy Clarkson has the same clout with car sales in the UK.

The power of television dictates that the prat Richard (he’s not gay, really!) and his chubby old duffer of a wife (Britain’s only arranged marriage for a white couple) are the chosen ones as far as picking the nations literature goes and so therefore Jeremy Clarkson must be the messiah as far as boys and their car choices goes, although few can afford the gas guzzling behemoths the chubby public schoolboy usually plonks in his huge drive.

I like the guy he presents on telly and any man that punches Piers Morgan in the face (on three different occasions) is alright by me, although it wasn’t because Piers had a face that needed punching, it was because the Mirror man kept snapping Clarkson kissing women that weren’t his wife, allegedly.

Clarkson is one of those lucky presenter/journalists that have managed to get themselves into a position of notoriety in the media where he can actually have his opinion without censure, Richard Littlejohn and John Gaunt style. He’s ever so slightly right of centre views speaks for the majority of the nation and his tirade against this politically correct suitcase Blair has jack-booted us into can only be commended. Love him or hate him he has kept free speech alive. He is also an excellent comic writer, every one of his books best sellers. In fact I didn’t realize how good he was until I waded into this.

This one is a collection of his articles from various broadsheets and motoring magazines, the bulk of the material on cars and motoring things in general, although that’s not all as he revels in badmouthing everything from the good people of Norfolk and their caravans to annoying Frenchman. And why not give the smoking bans and the demon speed cameras a couple of barrels. Johnny Foreigner has no chance here and if you don’t vote conservative then Jeremy maybe too much for you.

In Clarkson’s early days as a motor journalist he learnt to say nice things about crappy cars to keep being invited back to the press junkets, freebies for all. But this series of books are a revenge for all that toadying and he lets you know he no longer has to say nice things about very bad cars, Clarkson now the voice and authority of British motoring. Watching his polar exhibition last week on Top Gear he has certainly taken his job to the extreme to stay on top in the business. This guy has got some balls and very entertaining, whatever his chosen medium.

The book is very funny in places but way too long at 500 plus pages, some 200 different articles of packed in here, mostly on cars which I’m not a huge fan of. But the guy can make a write-up on a Mazda ZX very very funny and you just keep trawling through it until you’re laughing out loud again. The guy is no holds barred when it comes to slagging off foreign and British cars alike and clearly fears no reprisals. He’s become so famous and positioned that the car companies just have to grit their teeth and take his berating, come what may, hoping for a good review if their lucky. If he destroys the new Ford ‘whatever’ then that car is going to lose lots of sales. I think it’s also fair to say Top Gear don’t get hold of new models if they are going to slag them.

The world is a maddening place for Clarkson and he has lots of time to get his own back here. If it’s annoying, time wasting or just plain stupid then it’s going to get Jeremy’s mini-gun of hate spitting words and punctuation of the pages in all directions. Some of his comment and diatribe here is really quite strong and I’m sure some car models never recovered.

This book will appeal to both lads and lasses and all those who switch off when he comes on TV would be surprised just how good a writer he is, the book reading like Clarkson’s autocue does on TV. That polar edition of Top Gear last night was excellent TV and when you read his books you have to say the guy is very intelligent and an impressive modern writer.

If you don’t like cars then this does get a bit wearing. Its one of those books you have to dip in and out of, giving yourself two to three weeks to read it. If you’re not a petrol head but still amused by Clarkson’s style then you may last at least 250 pages of this, well worth the asking price at £6.99. But I would say that this is not the best of his books and I would try one of the more rounded ones on different subjects before tackling this, the car only book...

Summary: Recycling articles.