Clarkson hints at return of ‘Top Gear’

JEREMY Clarkson has hinted that the Top Gear team may have a future outside of the BBC, as the programme could “be back somewhere else”.

The axed presenter thanked the audience for “coming to see an unemployed man” as he hosted a charity auction for a Chipping Norton swimming pool. It was his first public appearance since his sacking.

Auctioning a Top Gear Kung Fu Stig T-shirt advertised as being “signed by a former presenter”, Clarkson said: “Now some of you know there used to be a programme called Top Gear. It was on the BBC. But we could be back somewhere else. Or maybe even not somewhere else, who knows?”

However, as he raised bids for the last official T-shirt, he hinted that he may have severed ties with the programme once and for all, saying: “It may well be the last ever time I put my name on that merchandise.”

As bids for a signed advance copy of his latest book, What (More) Could Possibly Go Wrong? faltered around the £50 mark (about R880), he joked: “That’s how fast a man can devalue.”

Clarkson placed a bid himself for deerstalking, donated by Lord and Lady Rotherwick, saying, “I’m unemployed and I’m going to pay £250.” He was eventually outbid as the stalking outing on Cornbury Park Estate sold for £350.

He continued to make light of his unemployment and j oked

IDLE IDOL: Jeremy Clarkson about “trawling the job centre” when he spotted an opening for the auction in Chipping Norton.

Typically, he mistook a male bidder for a female but responded by saying: “I have worked with James May, it is easy to get confused in these situations.”—