mordant wit

by Jeremy Clarkson

Last week I wrote about my recent trip to America, and to be honest it didn’t go down well. I don’t think I’ve ever been on the receiving end of such a blizzard of bile. One man called me an “imbosile”. Hundreds more suggested that it’d be better for everyone if I just stayed at home in future.

And do you know the awful thing? I haven’t finished yet. Last week’s column was just an introduction, an amuse-bouche, a scene-setter. It’s this week that things really start to get going . . .

So far we’ve looked at the problem in America of power without responsibility. Step out of the loop, do something unusual and you’ll encounter a wall of low-paid, low-intellect workers whose sole job is to prevent their bosses from being sued. As a result, you never hear anyone say: “Oh I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

You know the Stig. The all-white racing driver we use on Top Gear. Well, we were filming him walking through the Mojave desert when lo and behold a lorry full of soldiers rocked up and arrested him. He was unusual. He wasn’t fat. He must therefore be a Muslim.

It gets worse. I needed money to play a little blackjack in Vegas but because I was unable to provide the cashier with an American zip code he was unable to help. It’s the same story at the petrol pumps. Americans can punch their address into the key pad and replenish their tank. Europeans have to prove they’re not terrorists before being allowed to start pumping.

I seem to recall a television advertisement in which George W Bush himself urged us all to go over there for our holidays. But what’s the point when you can’t buy anything? Or do anything. Or walk across the desert in a white suit without being arrested.

The main problem I suspect is a complete lack of knowledge about the world. I asked people in the streets of Vegas to name two European countries. The very first woman I spoke to said: “Oh yes. What’s that one with kangaroos?”

Then you’ve got New Orleans, which, nearly a year after Katrina, is still utterly smashed and ruined. Now I’m sorry but insects can build shelter on their own. Birds can build nests without a state handout. So why are the people of Louisiana sitting around waiting for someone else to do the repairs?

I tried to help out. I tried to give a car I’d been using to a Christian mission. But I was threatened with legal action because the car in question was a 91 and not the 98 that had allegedly been promised. A very angry woman accused me of “misrepresentation”.

Not everyone in America is deranged, of course. Sammy certainly isn’t. Sammy was helping us out washing cars, and one night, over dinner, he explained how he’d become so badly burnt. And why, as a result, the best he could hope for out of life was washing cars for cash.

His car had exploded after it was rammed from behind by an off-duty cop. He was taken to a hospital that had no air-conditioning, in California, in the summer. Not nice when you have third-degree burns to half your body.

And to make matters worse, there was nobody to help him go to the loo, so he either did his business where he lay — or went through untold agony by rolling over to pee on the floor.

The bill for his botched plastic surgery was half a million dollars, $15,000 of which came from the cop’s insurance. This means Sammy can never get a proper job, or buy a house or find credit.

The government, he says, is waiting for him to pop up on the radar and then they’ll come round to get their greenbacks back.

Of course, many Americans would say our health service is far from perfect and I’d agree. I’d agree there are lots of things wrong with Britain.

I’d also agree, having been to every single state in the US — apart from Rhode Island — that there are good things about America. The hash browns, for instance, served up by Denny’s are delicious, you can turn right on a red light and er . . . well, I’m sure there’s a lot more but I can’t think of anything at the moment.

Among the things I don’t like is the way everyone over 15 stone now moves about in a wheelchair. As a result, it takes half an hour to get through even the widest door. And I really don’t like the way that every small town looks exactly the same as every other small town. Palmdale in California and Biloxi in Mississippi are nigh on identical. They have the same horrible restaurants. The same mall. The same interstate drone. Live in either for more than a week and you’d be stabbing your own eyes with knitting needles.

But it’s the idiocracy that really gets me down. The constant coaxing you have to do to get anything done. “No” is the default setting whether you want to change lanes on a motorway or get a drink on a Sunday. It’s like trying to negotiate with a donkey. Once, I urged a cop in Pensacola, Florida, to use his common sense and let me load a van in the no loading zone, since the airport was shut and it would make no difference. “Sir,” he said, “you don’t need common sense when you’ve got laws.”

That, I think, probably says it all.