Clarkson on NZ

Adam Dudding at Stuff reports:

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has broken the habit of a lifetime and said something nice about a foreign country – namely New Zealand.

Clarkson, who has referred to Mexicans as “lazy, feckless, flatulent” oafs, given a Nazi salute in an episode about BMWs, and labelled Australians “convicts”, raves about New Zealand in his column in today’s London Sunday Times.

New Zealand, he writes, is “absolutely stunning; bite-the-back-of-your-hand-to-stop-yourself-from-crying-out lovely”.

It is. I think we take what we have for granted sometimes.

With characteristic humility, Clarkson uses his newspaper column to advise God that he made a mistake when choosing the Middle East as his religious base.

“If you were God and you were all-powerful, you wouldn’t select Bethlehem as a suitable birthplace for your only child because it’s a horrible place.

“And you certainly wouldn’t let him grow up anywhere in the Holy Land.

“What you’d actually do is choose New Zealand.”

If God really were all-knowing, continues Clarkson, “children at Christmas time today would be singing ‘Oh little town of Wellington’ and people would not cease from mental fight until Jerusalem had been built in Auckland’s green and pleasant land.”

Perhaps the most startling compliment, however, is Clarkson’s claim that if God had got it right, “Jesus would have been from Palmerston North”, a stark deviation from the verdict of his countryman John Cleese, who once said the North Island city should be renamed “suicide capital of New Zealand” because “if you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick”.

Where would they find a virgin in Palmerston North?? 🙂