I know you got soul - Jeremy Clarkson

BossArky

You may recognise Jeremy Clarkson as the fellow from Top Gear. A person I work with quoted "I know you got soul" as their fav.book so I picked it up. On chapter 4 at the moment.

This book is packed with interesting info, but is it just me or is Clarkson's attitude incredibly arrogant and insulting to non English? i.e the way he refers to the French as "Johnny Frog" or the Russians as "Ivan".

Dades

He knows his market.

Was looking at the Sundays Times bestseller lists a week ago - he was all over it with two, if not three books on the go.

tHE vAGGABOND

this book is really compete and utter rubbish tbh..

he must be laughing all the way, as Im sure it took him about a week to write..

sambora

I thought this book was really cool. Kept me immensely entertained on a recent boring family holiday lol

MagnumForce

BossArky wrote:

is it just me or is Clarkson's attitude incredibly arrogant and insulting to non English? i.e the way he refers to the French as "Johnny Frog" or the Russians as "Ivan".

If anyone finds that offensive then they are being WAY to sensitive. Ivan is a common Russian name, so its makes sense to refer them as "Ivan", just like people refer to the Irish as "Paddys". and I for one have absolutly no problem with being refered to as a "Paddy", it in no way implies a fault with my characture or physical self, and has no derogatory effect on me.

And the French eat frogs legs so hence the "Johhny Frog", thats not insulting at all, if he called them "Dirty Ugly Frog Eating Rude French Bastards", that would be different.

People need to relax with this political correctness stuff, its getting a bit extreme, the the other month my mother whispered the word Japanese while sayng the sentence "there were alot of japanese there", refering to outside the church at my sisters wedding in Malta. When i asked her why she whispered Japanese, she said "In case there was any around". I just told her "Im sure they know they're Japanese, you dont need to whisper it". People are afraid to say anything these days, its terrible.

tHE vAGGABOND

If anyone finds that offensive then they are being WAY to sensitive. Ivan is a common Russian name, so its makes sense to refer them as "Ivan", just like people refer to the Irish as "Paddys". and I for one have absolutly no problem with being refered to as a "Paddy", it in no way implies a fault with my character or physical self, and has no derogatory effect on me.

Thank you!

I HATE the PC attitude of some people, where you can’t have 'nicknames' or use any form of incorrect names for anyone. You can’t walk around on egg shells because small minorities of people use the words in 'bad faith'. In that case we could rule out half of the words in the language

I'm about 3 or 4 months home from living in London. Over there some of my mates just knew me as 'Irish' and some knew me as 'Paddy', I don’t care. I’m crap with names myself, so I called people from New Zealand 'Kiwi' and whatnot. People don’t mind, and should not mind to be honest.

theCzar

Clarkson is Clarkson, reading one of his books and complaining about mild, and often satirical English bias is a bit silly. In fact he's always (ok, usually) willing to give credit where credits due (provided some obscure British engineer/inventor doesn't have some tentative link!), and laments the falling standards in British engineering. His slightly childish delight in getting one up on johnny foreigner is understandable enough.

I'm going to open a can of worms right here by suggesting that people who say they find Clarkson's attitude to foreigners offensive, really just find his love of England annoying, given our strong anti-English bias.

I know you got soul is a diverting read that passes the time, entertaining and interesting.