Paddington Bear toys paid Jeremy Clarkson's school fees before Top Gear fame
Jeremy Clarkson's parents sold tea cosies and had no idea how they would pay for private school. Then they sewed two Paddington Bears for their children, started selling copies without permission, and ended up with worldwide rights from the author himself. That windfall educated the boy who became Britain's loudest motoring presenter.
Born on 11 April 1960 in Sprotbrough, Yorkshire, Clarkson owed his schooling to a lucky encounter. When Michael Bond's lawyers objected to the unlicensed bears, Clarkson's father travelled to London, happened to meet Bond himself in a lift, and left with global licensing rights, eventually selling to Hamleys. The proceeds paid for Hill House and then Repton, where Clarkson says he was brutally bullied and from which he was expelled for drinking, smoking and making a nuisance of himself, leaving with one C and two fails at A level.
He started out selling the bears, then trained as a reporter on the Rotherham Advertiser and worked on several regional papers. In 1984 he co-founded a motoring press agency, and he has written for Top Gear magazine since it launched in 1993. His break came when a screen test consisting of a 20-minute rant against the Citroën 2CV won him a place on the original Top Gear, which he presented from 1988 to 1999. He also hosted the first series of Robot Wars and a BBC Two talk show.
In 2002 he and producer Andy Wilman reinvented Top Gear, with Richard Hammond and later James May, and it became the most widely broadcast factual programme in the world. The BBC dropped him in 2015 after he assaulted a producer on location. The trio moved to Amazon with The Grand Tour, made by their company W. Chump and Sons, until 2024.
A later chapter unfolded in the countryside. Since 2019 he has farmed Diddly Squat Farm for Clarkson's Farm on Prime Video, and a May 2024 planning amendment nicknamed Clarkson's clause eased the conversion of unused farm buildings for business, as he had tried with a restaurant. He also hosts Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and writes columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun.
Source: Jeremy Clarkson
