The Right-Wing Gargoyle of British Media
Introduction: When “Just a Joke” Stops Being Funny
Jeremy Clarkson has made a career out of offending people.
For decades he’s been the BBC’s bad boy, Top Gear’s loose cannon, the newspaper columnist who “tells it like it is”. To his fans, he’s the last unfiltered truth-teller in a world gone soft. To others, he’s Britain’s most enduring bully — a man who mistakes cruelty for candour and dresses prejudice up as humour.
When Clarkson recently used his national newspaper column to mock Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski’s appearance — sneering about his teeth and looks rather than his politics — he wasn’t being mischievous or edgy. He was doing what he’s always done: using a powerful media platform to punch down.
The incident wasn’t isolated. It’s the latest entry in a long history of insults, slurs and personal attacks that reveal not just bad taste, but a consistent worldview — one that’s unmistakably right-wing, antagonistic and obsessed with domination.
A Career Built on Cruelty
Clarkson’s rise coincided with Britain’s tabloid age: the 1990s boom in celebrity mockery, xenophobic humour and laddish “banter”. Top Gear gave him global reach — 350 million viewers in its heyday — and with it came permission to offend.
He’s called striking public-sector workers “lazy” and declared that “frankly, I’d have them all shot in front of their families.”
He described then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”, ridiculed the Welsh language as “pointless”, and sneered that Americans are “fat, stupid and rude”.
Even when cameras weren’t rolling, he managed to cross lines. In unaired Top Gear footage, he was caught muttering a racial slur while reciting “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe.” During a Top Gear special in Burma, he referred to a local man as a “slope” — a racial epithet aimed at Asians. The BBC apologised; Clarkson brushed it off as a joke.
When he was finally sacked in 2015 after physically assaulting a producer, many expected that to be the end. Instead, he landed softly with The Grand Tour on Amazon, a column in The Sun and later The Sunday Times. His brand — part grievance, part arrogance — was simply too valuable to cancel.
Insults as Ideology
What sets Clarkson apart isn’t just the number of people he’s insulted, but the type of people: workers, minorities, environmentalists, progressives, women. His barbs rarely land on the powerful — they land on the vulnerable or the unfashionable.
This is the classic dynamic of the bully: punch down, never up.
His targets mirror the right-wing tabloid playbook.
Trade unions? “Lazy spongers.”
Eco-activists? “Smelly crusties.”
Feminists and progressives? “Humourless snowflakes.”
Foreign languages like Welsh? “Pointless.”
Immigrants and minorities? Constant fodder for jokes about “them”.
Through it all runs a clear ideology: contempt for change, disdain for empathy, and fear of equality. Clarkson’s persona — the straight-talking bloke who says what others won’t — functions as the cultural wing of Britain’s right-wing populism. He sells the fantasy that cruelty equals honesty and mockery equals freedom.
A Pattern of Behaviour — Clarkson’s Greatest Hits of Contempt
| Year / Period | Target or Group | Quote or Incident | Nature of Attack | Source / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Germans | “A Kraut in a tank is just as bad as a Kraut in a car.” | National stereotype / xenophobia | Top Gear episode |
| 2009 | Gordon Brown | “One-eyed Scottish idiot.” | Ableism / anti-Scottish | BBC News apology issued |
| 2011 | Public-sector strikers | “Frankly, I’d have them all shot in front of their families.” | Violent rhetoric / anti-union | The One Show, BBC |
| 2014 | Burmese man | “There’s a slope on the bridge.” | Racial slur | Top Gear Burma special |
| 2015 | Top Gear producer | Physical assault incident leading to dismissal | Workplace bullying / violence | BBC report |
| 2022 | Meghan Markle | “Hated her on a cellular level… paraded naked through the streets.” | Misogyny / humiliation fantasy | The Sun column (later retracted) |
| 2024 (Reported) | Zack Polanski | Mocked appearance: “beer-bellied, yellow-toothed scarecrow gargoyle.” | Appearance-based bullying | Newspaper column; reader complaints |
| Ongoing | Environmentalists | “Tree-huggers and eco-mentalists ruining our lives.” | Anti-green rhetoric | Sunday Times columns |
The Meghan Markle Column: Hatred in Print
In December 2022, Clarkson published perhaps his most infamous column, targeting Meghan Markle. He wrote that he “hated her on a cellular level” and fantasised about her being paraded naked through the streets while crowds threw excrement and chanted “Shame!”.
The imagery wasn’t just misogynistic — it was medieval. The piece provoked over 25,000 complaints, the most ever received by the UK’s press regulator. Even his daughter publicly condemned him. Yet the editor who commissioned it faced no serious consequences; Clarkson’s column remains syndicated.
The episode exposed something deeper than bad taste. It revealed the dark heart of Clarkson’s persona: the joy of humiliation. It’s the same pleasure bullies take in seeing someone else reduced, degraded, or shamed — all under the banner of “just a laugh”.
The Zack Polanski Episode: Bullying as Propaganda
So when Clarkson turned his attention to Zack Polanski, the Green Party deputy leader, he followed a familiar script. Rather than engage with Polanski’s ideas on environmental policy or social justice, Clarkson mocked his looks — his teeth, his face, his style — as if those things mattered more than his politics.
It’s classic deflection: attack the person, not the argument. Reduce a political opponent to a punchline. It’s also strategic. The right-wing press has always sought to ridicule green and left-wing figures as “odd”, “ugly” or “unmanly” — anything to make them seem unserious.
But Clarkson’s description of Polanski — “beer-bellied, yellow-toothed, scarecrow-looking gargoyle” — takes it further. It’s playground cruelty in column inches. And because it appears in a mainstream outlet, it legitimises that behaviour, turning personal abuse into acceptable commentary.
When ordinary people are taught that this is normal political discourse, democracy itself suffers.
The Power Imbalance
One reason Clarkson’s bullying matters is scale. An insult shouted in a pub stays in a pub. An insult printed in The Sun or broadcast to millions becomes part of the national conversation. Clarkson’s words carry weight because he’s a multimillionaire media brand with decades of loyal fans and editors who indulge him.
That’s the problem with calling him a “provocateur”. Provocation implies risk — but Clarkson risks nothing. His targets, on the other hand, are often people with limited means to reply. When he mocks someone’s looks, culture or background, he’s not speaking truth to power; he is the power.
The Right-Wing Bully Archetype
Clarkson embodies a certain archetype in British culture: the “blokey” right-wing bully who confuses confidence with cruelty. You see versions of him across the media — the columnist who mocks refugees, the shock jock who rails against “woke snowflakes”, the comedian who insists political correctness has “gone mad”.
The formula is simple:
Say something cruel → call it a joke → accuse critics of lacking humour → cry censorship when people object.
It’s the politics of provocation — performative cruelty dressed as authenticity. And it works. It sells papers, drives clicks, rallies the aggrieved. In an era of outrage, Clarkson has become outrage’s elder statesman.
Why It Matters
Some argue that we should ignore Clarkson — that responding gives him the attention he craves. But indifference only enables impunity. Each time his bullying goes unchallenged, it normalises the idea that public humiliation is entertainment and that “free speech” means freedom from consequences.
That’s why the Polanski episode — seemingly small in isolation — deserves scrutiny. Because it shows the continuum: from jokes about Welsh to slurs about foreigners, from mocking unions to fantasising about punishing women, Clarkson’s behaviour isn’t random. It’s ideological bullying in service of right-wing populism.
And as Britain faces crises of inequality, climate change and division, those who attack empathy and diversity aren’t just being rude — they’re doing political work.
The Real Joke
Clarkson often insists that he’s merely “saying what everyone thinks”. But the truth is simpler: he says what some people want to think without feeling guilty about it. He gives permission to sneer, to look down, to laugh at others’ expense. That’s not honesty. That’s cowardice.
The real joke, then, isn’t on his targets. It’s on his audience — those convinced that mocking the vulnerable is somehow brave. In reality, it’s the easiest thing in the world.Time to Call It What It Is
Jeremy Clarkson isn’t a rebel. He isn’t a free-speech martyr. He’s a man who has spent his career turning cruelty into content, prejudice into entertainment, and bullying into brand identity.
His latest attack on Zack Polanski simply reminds us what he’s always been: a right-wing bully in a designer jacket, using his column inches to punch down and protect the powerful.
He’ll claim it’s “just humour”. But humour stops being funny when it serves power, not truth.
Author’s Note & Disclaimer
This article represents opinion and commentary based on publicly available sources including BBC News, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Sunday Times, Top Gear broadcasts, and publicly archived quotes.
All quotations are attributed to Clarkson’s recorded or published remarks.
The intent is public-interest analysis and fair criticism of a high-profile media figure’s public conduct and its political context.
No allegation of undisclosed private behaviour is made.
