Clarkson vs. Mandela - The Clash of the Titans - Aurea Mediocritas

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Clarkson vs. Mandela - The Clash of the Titans

28.02.10

I’m just back from the Top Gear Live world tour. It was five weeks of Keith Moon-like excess, during which we chartered superyachts, sent Eurocopters out for fish and chips, played beach cricket with AC/DC and tequila-slammed our livers until they felt like walnuts.

The fact is, though, we aren’t really rock stars, which is why we were so surprised, in Johannesburg, to receive an invitation to meet Nelson Mandela. For the life of us, we simply couldn’t work out why the greatest living statesman would want to waste his precious time with two Top Gear presenters and their piggy-eyed promoter. And, worse, what on earth would we talk about?

As a general rule, I’m quite good at small talk. But there’s a world of difference between a Sunday morning drinks party in Fulham and an audience with perhaps the most famous face on earth. “What do you do?” simply wouldn’t cut it. Nor would “I flew over Robben Island in a Eurocopter yesterday and it looked quite nice”.

It was like queuing for a wedding line-up. You want to say something to the bride’s father that all the other guests haven’t said before, but what hasn’t already been said to Nelson Mandela? My head was in a spin. I was shaking with nerves. And perhaps that’s why my first question was — and I’m not making this up — “So, Mr Mandela, have you ever been to a lap-dancing club?”

As Mr Mandela explained, with much dignity, that, no, he hadn’t, I looked in desperation to James May and the piggy-eyed promoter for some help. But they were wearing that look of pure incredulity that could be conjured up only if someone had just asked the world’s one living saint if a girl in a nylon frock had ever shoved her vulva in his face.

There was, as you can imagine, a bit of a gap in the conversation at this point but Mr Mandela was too schooled in the art of diplomacy to let it last long and decided to ask us a question. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting. “So,” he said, “what was it like on the moon?”

I should explain at this point that these days Mr Mandela spends a lot of his time meeting people who are passing through Johannesburg. As we left, for instance, Danny Glover, the Lethal Weapon actor, was waiting to go in. The previous day, apparently, he’d met Eddie Izzard, who’s raising funds for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

And when you are sitting in an office all day, meeting an endless stream of people you don’t know, it’s easy to get them a bit muddled up. That’s why he wanted to know about the moon. He had plainly been told the three of us were astronauts.

This was tricky. I couldn’t very well say that we were not because that might look argumentative; nor could I say that we made a poky BBC2 television programme about cars because then he might wonder what on earth we were doing wasting his valuable time.

So I did what I thought was best and said it was very rocky and dusty and there was not much gravity.

Once again I looked to May for help, since he had recently made a programme about space and might know a bit more on the subject. But he was simply too astonished to speak. His open-mouthed, slow head-turn said it all. “First you asked him if he’d ever been lap-dancing and now you are claiming to be Buzz Aldrin.”

Soon it got worse. Because Mr Mandela then asked if I’d ever met Her Majesty the Queen. Since I had, once, at the opening of a hospice in Oxford, I said yes. So, naturally, he asked how she was. And I found myself saying she was very well and that of course I would pass on his good wishes upon my return to, er, Cape Canaveral.

Happily, the piggy-eyed promoter came to the rescue by asking if Mr Mandela would be going to the World Cup finals this year. And finally we had a conversation going. But I was too frightened to take part because I knew that some time soon we would have to give Mr Mandela the presents we had brought. And I’d just realised they were completely inappropriate.

What do you give a man who really wants only peace, equality, justice and a cure for Aids? Stupidly, I had decided that the answer was: “One of my books.” The one with the cover featuring a picture of an ostrich in a crash helmet.

Vão ler o resto. A ser verdade, possívelmente a melhor história do mundo.

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2 comentários

De A.Bruto a 01.03.2010 às 00:47

muito boa. isto é demasiado surreal para ser mentira!

De Aurea Mediocritas a 01.03.2010 às 10:00

Chorei a rir.
Só tenho pena que não esteja gravado.

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