Status Anxiety | 7 June 2008

‘See that pot plant?’ said Jeremy Clarkson. ‘I could get a column out of that.’ We were at a supper party in Hay and indulging in that parlour game often played by newspaper columnists whereby we try to outdo each other when it comes to the ingenuity with which we can transform any subject, no matter how threadbare, into a column. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything less promising than a pot plant so I kept quiet, but now I can: a column about another columnist claiming he can get a column out of a pot plant. As a confirmed petrolhead who prides himself on being politically incorrect, I was delighted to be seated next to Clarkson and the fact that we were surrounded by lefties was the icing on the cake. Within seconds of sitting down he had provoked a firestorm of protest by claiming there are ‘two sides’ to the climate change debate and that anyone who believes otherwise has simply not studied all the scientific evidence.