CLARKSON SAYS 'NIGGER' !

Once again, Jeremy Clarkson has managed to get a bit of publicity for himself. This time, he's been caught using a 'naughty word', last time it was for making derogatory remarks about Mexicans.

Clarkson is the type of self-serving, arrogant 'celebrity' that I despise. He appears to have no talent other than for being crude and childish; his imbecilic antics on 'Top Gear', allied to those of his equally stupid co-presenters, stopped me watching the programme many years ago. That he finds it necessary to court attention by the occasional 'slip of the tongue' shows just how desperate this pathetic man is for said attention.

All that said, that the media is in an uproar because he supposedly uttered the word 'nigger' is ridiculous. Our television, radio and films are littered with foul language every day and words that must cause, at the very least, a degree of discomfort to many and serious offence to some, are commonplace. Indeed, it often seems that the producers of programmes of all sorts go out of their way to encourage such profanity. 'Fuck' is heard all of the time; 'bastard', 'bugger', 'shit' and many others, words that were considered unacceptable or the language of the gutter when I was younger, are so common as to be almost part of the vernacular. Even the appalling 'cunt' is heard with greater frequency.

Amidst all of this, the word 'nigger' has become not just frowned upon but considered to be the most unacceptable of all words - why ? It is a word which has a specific meaning in that it refers to a colour - 'nigger brown'. In the film 'The Dambusters' the main character, Guy Gibson VC, is accurately portrayed as having a black dog which he named nigger - in recent showings of the film the dog's name has been blanked out, so politically correct have become those in charge of such things. That their action is pathetically stupid seems to escape them.

'Nigger' is not a particularly nice word, but it is just that, a word. 'Frog', Eyetie', 'Hun',' Spick', 'Polack', 'Honky', 'Yank', 'Yid', 'Paki', 'Chink', 'Jap', 'Kaffir', and many, many more are also just words that have been used in different parts of the world to refer to people from somewhere else, generally in derogatory ways. That we are now strongly discouraged from using these, while the vast array of disgusting profanities are everyday speech, is idiotic.

When I was child there was a simple saying : 'Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me'. It's high time that our media, and the overly sensitive souls who rule us, grow up and accept that language is nothing to fear.