The Trib (25 page)

Now her formidable focus is not only on writing her autobiography to raise funds, but building on that sugar-crafting business. Recent commissions included christening cakes for Gay Byrne's grandchild, Harry, and Lucy Kennedy's baby son, Jack. But the bank is closing in, assessing those debts on Idrone House, formerly valued at €2 million. And that's an awful lot of sugar.

This Briton's got talent ... for making a £100 million fortune.

24 October 2010

S
upposedly the richest man in television, Simon Cowell is the Brit who's got talent for raking it in. Worth £100 million (€113.7 million) at the last count, he's arguably also the reason why a nation too broke to head to the pub instead tunes in every weekend for the diversion of seeing this latter-day Svengali of pop make another hapless wannabee redundant.

Having just turned a well-preserved fifty-one, displaying an impressive chest rug curling over one of his trademark V-necks, and with a smile more menacing than genial, Cowell pretty much sums up the current popular music industry in one neatly-coiffed package.

The object of
The X Factor
‘is not to be mean to the losers, but to find a winner' he has claimed, but Cowell is smart enough never to underestimate the public's taste for that thinly-disguised meanness. Unlike excitable Louis, tearful Cheryl, or Dannii Minogue, he's the judge all the contestants dread.

After all, he has his bad-boy image to maintain. When invited onto BBC Radio 4's
Desert Island Discs
four years ago, he said, if stranded, his one luxury would be a mirror ‘because I'd miss me'. Former girlfriend Jackie St Clair likely wished him marooned indefinitely when he presented her with a life-sized oil portrait of himself for her fiftieth birthday last year.

As an extremely eligible bachelor, he's also known a string of ex's. His engagement to St Clair's replacement, Afghan make-up artist Mezhghan Hussainy, has reportedly just broken up, while his longest relationship – six years with Terri Seymour, the US
Extra Extra
presenter who became Cowell's ex-ex in 2008 – ended after she finally admitted defeat in breaking his resolve never to marry or have kids. She was given $5 million cash and another $4.6 million to buy a Beverly Hills home.

Inevitably, there has been speculation about Cowell's sexual orientation, and that he might be gay or bisexual. He has refused to refute such rumours, sensibly telling one British newspaper that denial ‘would imply that it's some sort of evil' and given that there are ‘plenty of gay people working in television, so if I was, it wouldn't be a problem saying I was'.

Cowell is no working-class hero, despite having left school at sixteen. He attended public school, and his parents weren't short of a few bob. But they insisted he use his pocket money for ice lollies when they went on luxury holidays, and instilled in the boy the need to make his own lolly as an adult. He's made no secret of that devotion to money – ‘as much as I can get my hands on'. He famously told
Rolling Stone
magazine he regretted not being around in the 1960s to sign The Beatles – not for Lennon and McCartney's timeless music, but for the timeless royalties.

Another of his crimes against humanity was Robson and Jerome's cover version of
Unchained Melody
, which blocked
Common People
by Pulp from the number one slot in 1995.

Still, as the nation huddles around their tellies from now until the austerity Christmas ahead, it's unsentimental Simon who will go on, like a murdered ballad on an endless loop, bringing a glow to the nation's cheeks each weekend.

Clarkson's way with words has once again put him and the BBC in hot water.

9 November 2008

W
hen the opening bars of The Allman Brothers' 1973 hit ‘Jessica' strike, it's the signature tune for viewers to either crank up the volume, or change channels at turbo speed.
Top Gear
is one of the BBC's most enduringly popular series, with motoring presenters James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson a winning team. Of the three, it's self-confessed petrol-head Clarkson who provokes mirth and moral indignation in equal measure.

For some inveterate telly addicts, his all-round ‘ordinary bloke' persona bears an uncanny resemblance to spoof TV presenter Alan Partridge. The Lexus-driving, failed chat show host Partridge is the comic creation of comedian Steve Coogan. On a guest appearance on
Top Gear
, Coogan declared his indebtedness to Clarkson as part inspiration for caricature, cringe-inducing
I'm Alan Partridge
sketches, such as the programme idea for
Crash! Bang! Wallop!
– a show about car crashes – or when Partridge quotes from the pages of
Top Gear
magazine to rubbish the make of car belonging to his wife's lover.

When motormouth Clarkson performs such stunts as testing the crumple potential of a pick-up truck by slamming it into an ancient horse chestnut, torching a detested caravan, or describing the Ferrari 355 as being like ‘a quail's egg dipped in celery salt and served in Julia Robert's belly button', it's easy to see why
The Daily Mirror
dubbed him ‘the dazzling hero of political incorrectness' in 2000.

The ‘dazzling' bit turned out to be somewhat prescient, funnily enough, for Piers Morgan. The former
Mirror
editor was doused with a glass of water during an argument with Clarkson on a flight; then, at the British Press Awards, Morgan was sworn at and punched in the face by an enraged Clarkson, who claimed his privacy had been invaded. None of which seemed to do the presenter's testosterone-fuelled image any harm. Even in the Channel 4 viewers' poll listing the
100 Worst Britons We Love to Hate
, Clarkson was placed a reasonably respectable sixty-sixth.

To lighten the techno jargon of his supercharged pronouncements on all things motoring, Clarkson, on occasion, drives a metaphorical truck over the sensibilities of quite a sizeable group of innocent bystanders, which include women, the gay community, environmentalists, and Korean car manufacturers.

And, in eerie coincidence with Partridge's turn as Radio Norwich presenter, a ‘We Hate Jeremy Clarkson' club was set up by residents of Norfolk after he said people living in the ‘flat and featureless' area were backward and would point and exclaim, ‘Hey, look, it's a car!' whenever he drove past. Hyundai complained to the BBC about his comments at the Birmingham Motor Show after he said one of their designers had most likely ‘eaten a spaniel for lunch'. He agreed with an audience member that a car could be ‘a bit gay', or as he put it, a bit ‘ginger beer'. ‘Eco-mentalists' as he calls them, are just a bunch of ‘old trade-unionists and CND lesbians'.

His concern about the tough lot of lorry drivers on last week's
Top Gear
has added more fuel to the general debate about editorial standards at the BBC. ‘Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day,' exclaimed Clarkson in one scene. There is no doubt that Clarkson delights in winding people up, particularly what he calls ‘lefties', ‘Guardianistas', and ‘those of a sandal persuasion'.

So is he just having a laugh? Is he wittily exposing extremes of political correctness? Or is Clarkson a prime example of the arrogant pub bore, an ethnocentric chauvinist embodying the worst aspects of a certain English stereotype, a man accused by more than just Korean car-company executives as being ‘bigoted and racist'?

Clarkson attended Repton, one of Britain's elite public schools. His working-class parents – teacher mother and travelling salesman father – are said to have paid for the fees through the success of their soft toys' business. Eventually expelled for ‘making a nuisance of himself', the teenage Clarkson nonetheless fitted the profile as he played the role of a public schoolboy in a radio adaptation of the Jennings novels.

His career in journalism revved off on a local paper in his native Yorkshire. Writing has continued to be a major source of income, with a stint on
The Sun
, and a regular column in
The Sunday Times
to this day. But his passion for motoring, combined with a way with words and childlike enthusiasm, made him a natural as presenter of
Top Gear
.

Last week saw two forced resignations and a suspension at the BBC over the offence caused during a prank call [Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's offensive phone call to Andrew ‘Manuel' Sachs]. Clarkson is now part of the general debate about editorial standards with regard to maverick presenters, free speech and comedy's right to breach boundaries. The corporation has responded to the latest criticism by asserting that most
Top Gear
viewers know exactly what to expect from Clarkson and that he was ‘comically exaggerating and making ridiculous an unfair urban myth about lorry drivers'.

So that's sorted, then, for anyone troubled over suitable targets for humorous focus at the Beeb: respected seventy-eight-year-old actor = offensive; murdered prostitutes = fair comment. In the past, Clarkson has dismissed as nonsense any perceived influence on what he says: ‘I enjoy this back and forth, it makes the world go round. But it is just opinion.'

At this stage, the forty-eight-year-old anti-eco, pro-hunting, Countryside-Alliance-supporting Clarkson is unlikely to undergo a socially liberal conversion anytime soon. Especially, as he so unreservedly exclaims: ‘God, I love being middle-class!' An incurable road hog too, he won't even accept the need for something as innocuous as a bus lane: ‘Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than me?'

Crash! Bang! Wallop!
it is then ... on bags or tee-shirts, owning property abroad, or going on spending sprees in New York. And that identity is priceless.

Merry Lee on high. It's all gone horribly right for George, the man ‘who told us so'.