‘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. He was extremely impressive, able to unleash a battery of statistics to quash anyone who challenged him. ‘You should write a book on the subject,’ I said.
‘I already have,’ he replied.
The debate moved on to the big talking point of this year’s Hay Festival, namely, whether the Guardian columnist George Monbiot was justified in his attempt to carry out a citizen’s arrest of John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN who Monbiot believes is guilty of war crimes. This was last Tuesday, the day before Bolton was due to arrive in Hay to promote his memoirs, and Monbiot’s plan was to arrest him in at the podium. Both Clarkson and I took the view that Hay should be the sort of place where people of radically opposing political views could talk freely to one another without the risk of being set upon by a self-promoting columnist.
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