Jeremy Clarkson has come to a startling realisation about the future of Britain as he celebrated a way forward for the beleaguered country in a reversal of his previously grave predictions of the future.
The 65-year-old writer and broadcaster celebrated what he felt made the country truly great in a world of economic giants in tech and manufacturing like China and the US.
Writing in his column for The Sun, Clarkson arrived at his revelation while watching TV on a sunny evening and decided to tune in to the BBC’s The Repair Shop.
The former Top Gear praised the heartwarming programme, which sees a team of expert crafters attempt to revive beloved family heirlooms, as “excellent” for avoiding the usual pitfalls of British TV.
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“The producers hadn’t wasted any of their time finding suitably diverse experts and guests,” he observed.
Imagining a hypothetical version of the show, Clarkson celebrated the real Repair Shop for not featuring “screaming campness” and “bewildered Somalians wondering why anyone would want to restore a teddy bear.”
Instead, he welcomed the programme for featuring a charmingly unfashionable band of “middle-aged women and some elderly gentlemen”.
Firing off a stray dig at Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Clarkson speculated the Labour leader would likely brand such a coalition as “far right” but insisted they were an example of “nice people who just wanted to restore something that used to make them happy”.
To demonstrate his point, the 65-year-old lauded the “seriously skilful” experts on the show that left him “in awe”.
Beyond his admiration for the beloved programme itself, Clarkson was “suddenly filled with optimism about the future for Britain” as he tuned in – reversing his previous despair about the once green and pleasant land.
Thinking about the global economy and the UK’s place in it, Clarkson reflected on where his necessary purchases would come from. His new tech would come from China and an off-road buggy needed for the farm from China.
Yet the country that once gave the world the industrial revolution, the television, the internet and penicillin finds itself dwarfed in such a world – which Clarkson conceded would “be easy to despair about all of”.
However, the former Top Gear presenter argued The Repair Shop demonstrated exactly how Britain can still make its mark – “Make do and mend stuff. Keep calm and carry on using it.”
The UK can revitalise its spirit and place in the world by “breathing new life into our past”.
In Clarkson’s mind, Britons are “shed people” and we should embrace this reality, tinkering away as a nation to repair the world’s beloved heirlooms and knick-knacks.
A perfect example of the 65-year-old’s thinking could be found as he watched Gerald, a Diddly Squat worker and Clarkson’s Farm fan-favourite, rebuild a dry-stone wall.
While he conceded Gerald would struggle to build one of China’s 220mph train, Clarkson wagered none of the Eastern giant’s 1.4 billion citizens could mend a wall like Gerald.