Jeremy Clarkson has spoken about noticing ‘increasing nerves’ from his colleagues, before a dinner party with Richard Hammond and James May ended with sporadic gunfire
Jeremy Clarkson has shed light on the dramatic events that unfolded when he, Richard Hammond, and James May travelled to Myanmar in 2014. While still part of Top Gear, they filmed a special in the region, which included a visit to the Shan state, known for one of the world’s longest ongoing civil wars.
Jeremy’s remarks about the Shan state came as he confessed his knack for being in countries just before major conflicts erupt. This includes being in Kyiv, Ukraine prior to the 2014 Maidan riots, in Damascus, Syria before the Arab Spring, Dakar ahead of the riots, and Mozambique before its unrest.
During their stay in the region, the various factions threw a welcome party for the trio, scenes from which were featured in the special broadcast in March 2014.
Now, Jeremy has delved deeper into what exactly transpired that night, including how the three presenters attempted to defuse rising tensions at the party.
In an article for The Times, Jeremy recounted how he, Richard, and James performed a rendition of Bobby Brown by Frank Zappa at one point, an act that he said went “against all the advice proffered by our increasingly nervous film crew”.
He added: “By 11pm, even I could sense that the factions were getting argumentative, so to distract them we decided to move from table to table, raising endless toasts with the Hankey Bannister and it sort of worked.
“In as much as I went to sleep in the back of my lorry that night without any gunshot wounds. There was a bit of sporadic gunfire as the party broke up but none of it went in me.
“The next morning, as I drove away, I do remember thinking that I’d spent the night in a tinderbox and that one day it was all going to end in tears.”
Beyond having to entertain a crowd of armed military factions, Jeremy also hinted that the audience may have been wound up before the event, not merely due to their disputes, but because they had consumed a substance called yaba that he alleges made users “extremely angry”.
Yet it’s not only overseas nations that Jeremy has been weighing in on lately, but his homeland too, with the ex-Grand Tour host and Clarkson’s Farm star campaigning for British farmers’ rights.
After the Labour government’s inheritance tax reversal, Jeremy has argued that half of farmers will remain impacted by a revised higher tax limit.
Writing a piece in The Sun, the Diddly Squat Farm owner cautioned: “Let’s not forget that half of all farms in the UK will still be hit. They will still have to be sold when the farmer dies, and who will buy them? …So the new higher tax threshold will still destroy the countryside. It’ll affect the country’s ability to feed itself.
“And there are still thousands of farmers out there who are having to deal with the stress of knowing that they cannot pass their farm on to the only people who know how to run it. Their children.”
Jeremy cautioned that whilst Labour’s policy reversal would ease pressure for some farming families, it wouldn’t provide relief for everyone. Consequently, he declared, the battle “goes on” to secure the backing farmers require during these tough financial periods.
