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Its official: snaw is actually Clarkson!!!

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    Its official: snaw is actually Clarkson!!!

    Jeremy Clarkson: Oops, £25,000 went overboard

    We all know the form at charity auctions. You have a few glasses of wine and then you spend an hour or so trying desperately to not buy trips in hot-air balloons and books that have been signed by TV’s David Dickinson.

    I especially know the form because recently I was the auctioneer at a charity event to raise funds for Chipping Norton’s swimming pool. The evening went brilliantly, mainly because two hands kept shooting out of the crowd buying just about everything, no matter how high the price.

    Annoyingly, the hands turned out to belong to my children, who had got bored and decided to join in. So we went home with, among other things, two bags of dung, a nylon T-shirt and several signed copies of my own book.

    With that experience so fresh in my mind I should have known better than to stick my hand up at a children with cancer do last week. The lot was a week on a 140ft superyacht in the south of France. It has two speedboats slung over the back, many windsurfers, two jet skis, 12 cabins, a crew of eight (including a bosun) and the usual range of bar stools coated in whale foreskin. Ordinarily, seven days on this ocean-going gin palace would cost £75,000, Bidding started at £25,000. Or rather it didn’t. Nobody put their hand up so, since I knew the auctioneer, I thought I’d help him out by getting the ball rolling. “At last,” he exclaimed, in an excitable, auctioneery way, “a bid of £25,000 from Mr Clarkson. Now. Who’ll give me £26,000?” The marquee, I noted with quiet satisfaction, was stuffed with several hundred extremely blonde women and an equal number of bronzed men who, I figured, would want to show their friends just how rich they’d become in recent years.

    This always happens. Only a week earlier, at yet another charity auction, I had gleefully stuck my hand up to buy two weeks’ use of the huge, 96-sheet advertising hoarding that dominates Cromwell Road coming into west London.

    I wanted it so I could write something rude about a colleague who commutes down that road every day, but knew in my heart of hearts it would go to someone much, much richer. And it did. And so would the boat . . .

    A minute passed and still no hands had gone up. The auctioneer was giving it his all, gyrating and twitching as though he’d become attached to the mains, but nothing.

    Then the awful truth began to dawn. The women were blonde because they were hairdressers, not jet-set jetsam. And the men were brown because they work all day in the open air, with scaffolding. Nobody was going to top my bid. And they didn’t.

    Outwardly I was calm. I’d just given £25,000 to a very worthy charity that seeks to provide a home away from home for the families of children with cancer. So I acknowledged the applause from the hairdressers and waved cheerily at the auctioneer whose bacon I had so nobly saved.

    But inwardly I was in a flat spin. I mean, @#%$, £25,000 is a colossal amount of money. And I’d just spent it by accident.

    Someone next to me tried to argue that £25,000 was cheap. But that rather depends how you look at it. Twenty-five thousand pounds for something that would normally cost £75,000 is indeed a bargain. But in the same way that I was once offered a fully functional jet fighter for £4.5m, it’s also completely irrelevant.

    I just don’t have this kind of money to hurl around like confetti. Maybe I’d spend £25,000 on a car. But on a whim? Jesus. I felt sick.

    Then it got worse because my wife, whose face had turned to the colour of tracing paper, was busy reading some small print in the catalogue about what the price didn’t include.

    Fuel for instance. And on a boat of this type you don’t measure consumption in terms of miles per gallon or even gallons per mile. Oh no. When you are topping up a vessel like this, you have to think of the diesel fuel in terms of tons. And then there are the mooring fees, which, in a port like Monte Carlo, will be hundreds and hundreds of pounds a night.

    “So,” I said to my wife quietly, “even if we could afford to get the boat to Monaco, and we can’t, we wouldn’t be able to afford to park it there.”

    Yes, and that’s just the start of it, because other things that weren’t included were drinks, food and, crucially, a tip for the crew, which is normally 10% of the charter fee. Great. I was facing a week on a boat, not eating, not drinking and not moving. Just recovering from the fact I’d had to walk to the south of France because I couldn’t afford the easyJet bill.

    You haven’t heard the really funny part yet. You see, contrary to what the auctioneer said in his warm-up spiel, it turns out the vessel is only available on the week commencing September 17.

    And guess what? Slap bang in the middle of the week commencing September 17 it’s the Top Gear charity karting evening. Where I shall be hosting a charity auction to raise money for the parents of children with cancer.

    I’ve examined all the options and I’m afraid the only solution is for me to commit suicide. Still, at least I’ll be going to heaven.

    ----

    Hope you are not into gambling snaw :rollin

    #2
    Clarksons not that good in go karts.

    He blames his dodgy hips now.

    But he never was all that good.
    Insanity: repeating the same actions, but expecting different results.
    threadeds website, and here's my blog.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by threaded
      Clarksons not that good in go karts.

      He blames his dodgy hips now.

      But he never was all that good.

      Yes, and like you Threaded, he can't fit inside a lambo. The difference being Clarkson can afford one.

      Comment

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