Jeremy Clarkson has called on people to be more understanding towards men who are going through a mid-life crisis, but says that anyone tempted to buy a Porsche and start dating their secretary should do something more in line with their age.
In an article for The Sunday Times, Clarkson said a man knows that “he is designed to have been eaten by a lion by the time he reaches 45, and that it’s only science and maths that are keeping him alive. He’s done everything he was designed to do. He’s procreated and provided. And now? He’s just meat.”
He adds: “To make matters worse, his children aren’t speaking to him. His parents are drooling into their Shackletons wingbacks… he can hear the Reaper’s approach and he feels as though, if he’s going to be kicking around for a little while, he may as well use the bits of his body that haven’t stopped working. And when he does? Well, the world turns on him and points the accusatory finger of love-rat condemnation.”
Clarkson said that the world should be more forgiving towards the man “who’s hurtling around the dance floor at a techno club with his 22-year-old secretary. He doesn’t want to be there. He hates modern music and his legs hurt. But he can’t help himself.”
But, the 55-year-old presenter adds, while touring Australia with his former Top Gear colleagues James May and Richard Hammond, he had a revelation. After tasting a rare and expensive honey, he realised that instead of trying to recapture his youth, a man “should welcome the onset of autumn by embracing the future. In short, he should get a hat and take up beekeeping.
“It’s gentle, sedate and harmless and… you end up with a honey that you can sell for a great deal of money. There’s a dignity to that,” Clarkson adds. “Which is what makes it better than spending the rest of your days trying to keep up with your new wife, who’s 19.”
Clarkson, Hammond and May recently finished the Australian leg of their self-titled world tour at the weekend, and they’ll now head to Warsaw and then five final dates at London’s O2 arena.
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Tonight on Top Beekeeper: I try to make honey with a hammer, is a bee faster than a wasp? and James has several anaphylactic seizures.
Side note: There’s a typo on the second line, it’s ‘crisis’ not ‘crises’. Or if ‘Crises’ is intended as a plural then the ‘a’ before ‘mid-life’ shouldn’t be there. I feel like a grammar nazi now lol.