Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Cynical Older Men and Female Role Models

Now if you had told me ten years ago that I would one day quite like Jeremy Clarkson I would have laughed in your face. At the time I felt that he embodied many of the things that I despised - sexist, blokey leather jacket wearing smoker who liked to drive fast cars (or should that be cars fast?).

so it is with some reluctance that I find myself reporting that I nearly bought a book by him today. Has Jeremy mellowed or is it I who have changed? Well I couldn't tell you...

The rot set in when he was on What not to Wear last year (that tight jeans and leather jacket on an older bloke look really is the pits - sorry guys!). I expected him to be obnoxious, but he actually came across as alright, self deprecating and quite funny. Since then I have occasionally watched bits of late night top gear (or whatever it's called) and he really is quite watchable. Then today I started reading bits of The world according to Clarkson when I was waiting to use the loo in Ottakars and realised that I wanted to read more - it was full of short pieces (not sure if it was originally a newspaper column), not unlike a blog, cynical, intelligent, well informed and witty, which makes a pleasent change from the in your face, chavved up humour that is so popular at the moment.

And just to completely change the subject. I was waiting in for a package to arrive from Santa this morning and was watching the early moring news, on which there was a short piece about Kate Moss and what a bad role model she is. what disturbed me tough was that they had done a survey of teenage girls asking them who they looked up to as a role model and the top answers were Jordan and Abi Titmuss! If that's the future for women in this country I'm bailing out now!

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