Read And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson for Free Online

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    You may have heard that at the British Press Awards last week I strolled over to Piers, the editor of the
Daily Mirror
, and punched him in the middle of his face.
    That, however, is only partly true. I also punched him on the jaw and on his cheek.
    Why? Well, he seems to think that if someone appears on television it is all right to publish photographs of them kissing girls goodnight and appearing on the beach while fat.
    I disagree.
    Which is why I haven’t and won’t spoil his fledgling career on the box by revealing details of his complicated private life.
    This disagreement has been running for some time. It all started when I refused to jump ship and write for the
Mirror
, saying I’d rather write operating manuals for car stereos, and the feud became public on the last Concorde flight, when I emptied a glass of water into his lap.
    So when everyone noticed we were both at the press awards, an air of expectancy fell on the room like a big itchy blanket. In recent years this do has become a back-slapping festival of bonhomie and fine wines, and everyone felt that here, at last, was a chance to go back to the old days of fisticuffs and abuse. Journalists behaving like journalists and not businessmen.
    Nobody came over and said, ‘Piers says you stink,’ but there was a playground mood nevertheless.
    The problem was, I’d never hit anyone before. I may not have the intellect of Stephen Fry but the reason I don’t have his nose is that I have enough nous to know that if I punch somebody they will punch me right back.
    Besides, fighting is so undignified. Who can forget John Prescott, his face all screwed up, as he lashed out at the protester in the run-up to the last general election? And then there was Jimmy Nail, who invited A. A. Gill outside for a spot of pugilism last year. You just wanted to say: ‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
    The first time Piers and I came close, he was talking the talk of the terraces, saying that I might be big but I’d go down like a sack of potatoes.
    Sadly, I don’t speak ‘football’ and by the time I’d worked out what he was on about, the editor of the
News of the World
had stepped in and was asking us to break it up.
    I honestly can’t remember what it was that finally triggered the action. One minute we were trading insults and the next I felt the hot surge of adrenalin and punched him.
    At this point the
Sun
’s diminutive motoring correspondent waded into the arena, addressing nobody in particular with a menacing: ‘I’m warning you. I’m from Newcastle.’
    Off to my left, a fat man in a white tux and with a huge Cuban cigar was drawling, ‘Finish it. Outside. Finish it,’ over and over again.
    And then there was the brother of a former famous editor of the
Sun
, rushing hither and thither as thought he had inadvertently trodden on 6 million volts. In other words, every single man in there was suddenly seven years old.
    It’s funny. Over the next couple of days women asked with a look of disdain why I hit him. Men, on the other hand, asked with barely disguised glee where I hit him.
    Piers fell into the man camp magnificently. Much as I don’t like him, I have to hand him full credit for saying after the third punch: ‘Is that all you’ve got?’
    Later, he explained he’d had worse drubbings from his three-year-old son.
    And me? Well, I seem to have broken one of my fingers. It’s bright blue, won’t move and looks like a burst sausage. How can this be? Bruce Willis finished off a whole skyscraper full of baddies without so much as tearing his vest, whereas I hit one middle-aged bloke and came away broken.
    I’d like to say this is because I’m weak and fragile and unskilled in the ways of the ruffian. But actually I suspect it has more to do with the strength of Mr Morgan.
    That’s why it’s such a good idea to immortalise him with a statue in Trafalgar Square.
    You can insult it, throw things at it, get birds to foul it and punch it from now to the