Jeremy Clarkson: BBC aren't giving jobs to men anymore

Jeremy Clarkson claims men no longer have a chance of getting top jobs at the BBC and says he’d do a better job running the broadcasting institution.

In an extraordinary rant against his former employers, 58-year-old Clarkson told the Radio Times that the gender balance at the BBC has ‘completely tipped.’

“Men now just don’t get jobs (at the BBC) at all. The new rap one is a women as well, isn’t it? That man said at Edinburgh, he was a BBC editor, you’d probably know him, he said: ‘The days when a middle-aged man stood on a hillside telling us things are over,’ Clarkson said.

He continued: “They have completely tipped. Honesty, poor old Nick Robinson going for an interview for Question Time. What a waste of petrol that was. No chance he’s going to get it. Anyone who has got a scrotum, forget it.

“They just aren’t giving jobs to men at the moment. There is an argument that it’s been all-men for a long time, so what’s wrong with it being all-women for some time? I get that. That’s fine. We just, as men, have to accept we’ve had it. Let’s just go down the bar.”

But despite these harsh accusations, he says he looks back on his time there fondly, and says if he was head of the organisation he would ‘make shows for everyone.’

“If I ran the BBC, it would be better…I’d make programmes for everybody, not just seven people in Islington.

“It’s become so up itself, suffocating the life out of everything with its nonsense need to be politically correct.

“If they’d let everyone relax, and made a show that’s entertaining or interesting or informative or any of the things that the BBC is supposed to be, then we’d be having a different debate about the future of television.

“I had a very happy time at the BBC and I care very much about it. I’d be sad if it got knackered by a few unwise Corbynites” he said.

Clarkson left the BBC as host of Top Gear in 2015 to host Amazon Prime’s rival show The Grand Tour. While Top Gear continues, it has suffered in ratings, and recently announced an all new line-up.

When asked by the Radio Times if Clarkson knew who Top Gear’s new host, Irish comedian Paddy McGuinness was, he replied by mockingly confusing him with IRA leader Martin McGuinness: “No. The IRA guy? No idea?”

The third series of The Grand Tour airs on Amazon Prime Video on January 18.

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