Hilarious and honest or boorish and bigoted? Untangling the strange, enduring appeal of Jeremy Clarkson

Back in 2008, someone going by the name of “Joseph Dark” created a petition on the government’s official public lobbying system. “Make Jeremy Clarkson prime minister,” it demanded, simply. By the time it closed, it had received 49,446 signatures. Clarkson was not made prime minister.

In one sense, that demonstration of public approval is an extraordinary show of faith in Clarkson, and host of motoring programmes. But in reality, it represents a very modest degree of support. It is about 0.15 per cent of the 32 million-odd votes that were cast at the last general election, and only a bit higher than Tory MP Robert Courts’s mandate in Witney (33,856 votes), the constituency where , itself the subject of an Amazon, is located. If he were to launch a coup, it would not be a very well-supported one.