Clarkson’s weighty problems

‘Top Gear’ presenter’s daughter opens up about struggle with body issues

AS THE daughter of one of TV’s biggest names, she enjoyed all the comforts of a privileged upbringing.

But that did not guarantee a happy adolescence for Jeremy Clarkson’s daughter Emily.

Emily Clarkson, now 23, has revealed that at one stage she was so unhappy with her weight that she would eat – and then cry to the point where she was physically sick.

The episode happened around the time she started at Rugby School, but believes it was “just unhappiness” and was not bulimia.

Emily says her father is partly to blame because she inherited the former Top Gear presenter’s solid frame.

“I have an enormous father and some of his genes,” she writes in her book Can I Speak To Someone In Charge?, which was published this week.

She writes candidly about her struggle with weight, saying her desire to be thin was so strong that she would compare her body with those of her classmates who had not started puberty, and curse hers for not looking like theirs.

“I used to squeeze my eyes shut, cross my fingers and wish that when I woke up in the morning I would be thin. I did this every single night. Every day I would look at my reflection and grimace. Sometimes I would look at it and cry.

“I would grab fat rolls on my stomach and squeeze them together so tightly there were finger marks. There were times when I was so unhappy that after eating I would cry to the point where I was sick.”

In the book, a series of open letters addressing the absurdities of modern life – some written to her 13-year-old self, she says: “I also know I will never be thin. I wasn’t built that way. I have bosoms, rather large ones.”

She reveals in the book that she became a target for online bullies because she has a celebrity father.

A chapter, Dear Online Trolls, says the online abuse started when she was 17, with people “having a go at me simply because I had a famous dad, and you reckoned because of this I was fair game”.

Insults included “another brainless vapid celebrity spawn spending daddy’s money”, “bloated mess” and “lump of lard”, Emily recalls.

Other comments included “Has Clarkson’s daughter eaten Richard Hammond?” and “Looks like Vicky Pollard”.

She writes: “There’s only so many of these you can read before you want to lock yourself in a room and cry until you can’t any more.

“Surely you have to see this isn’t right? That really, no one deserves this. That seventeenyear-old, insecure little me – who at this point had literally done no more to warrant this abuse than be alive – didn’t deserve this. I should have been allowed to carry my puppy fat in peace, and my grown-up fat for that matter, without the fear that one of you low-lifes was going to try and tear me down. We’ve somehow got to the point where no one is safe online.”

She adds: “To anyone currently being bullied at school and feeling that it will never end because the perpetrators will always be more powerful and more successful and more goodlooking than you, you need to remember that people like this never grow up to be the people that you, or they, thought they would. Trust me.”

Clarkson, who lives with her musician boyfriend Alex Andrew in London, appears to have inherited her 57-year-old father’s outspokenness.

On her website, Pretty Normal Me, which she started three years ago, she has ranted about shallow stars flaunting unrealistic photographs of their bodies.

Jane Kenyon, founder of Girls Out Loud, a social enterprise aimed at empowering teenage girls, praised Clarkson for revealing her body image issues. “Body shaming has no place in the classroom and being honest and open helps girls realise they are not alone,” she said.

“This is one issue where secrecy is dangerous. When girls recognise perfection is an illusion, their world improves tenfold.” – Daily Mail