Why Jeremy Clarkson Was Never Going To Be Sacked

So everyone's had a good night's sleep, a nice cup tea, and come to their senses. Jeremy Clarkson has apologised for suggesting that those on strike should be shot in front of their families, Unison's accepted the apology, and the world can move on.

For what the Top Gear presenter said on The One Show, with the Corporation's prior knowledge by all accounts, the union was well within its right to kick up a fuss. Clarkson's comments were crass, ignorant, and in woefully bad taste. But then, in a way, so was Unison's reaction, for it managed to escape their attention that the whole point of Jeremy Clarkson is to serve as a professional moron.

He is paid big money by the BBC for being precisely what he was on the evening show: loud, boorish, opinionated,ill-informed. That's his job. If we want erudite, witty, well-reasoned arguments, we don't tune in to The One Show, and we certainly don't seek out the opinion of the nation's favourite petrol head. Calling for him to be sacked is like wanting Bill Turnbull's head on a platter for being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at six o'clock in the morning.

As for the Prime Minister wading in with his opinion, giving Clarkson a slap on the wrist, what did that achieve, apart from proving that David Cameron's fully up-to-date with his zeitgeist tapes? Not to mention the tens of thousands of people who complained to the BBC the day after the show aired. At the time, the Corporation received just 50 complaints from angry viewers. It's a repeat of Sachs-gate, where hardly anyone got upset with Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross for pranking Fawlty Towers' Andrew Sachs until the media whipped the nation into a frenzy. Are the general public really that reliant on the red tops to make their opinions for them? Why am I even bothering to ask myself such an obvious question?

All that, now, is by-the-by. He's made his peace, been invited to spend a day with a healthcare assistant, and we can all calm down until he makes his next idiotic comment which, no doubt, won't be too far off.