Blackpool’s full of drunks, drug addicts and Syrian refugees (says Jeremy Clarkson)

FORMER Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been hit with an angry backlash after becoming the latest to lay into Blackpool and its people.
Jeremy ClarksonJeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson

Outspoken columnist and sacked Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has called for the town to be handed over to the fracking industry – because, he says, the town is full of: “drunks, drug addicts and Syrian refugees”.

Those comments came just days after a BBC report into slum landlords, and a poll stating Blackpool was the ‘sixth worst’ place to live in in the UK.

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In his weekly column for the Sunday Times, Clarkson said the town’s “disgusting” bedsits and guest houses had been turned into a: “cesspit of awfulness and disease”.

He said those in houses of multiple occupation (HMO) were: “not... what you’d call house-proud”.

The 55-year-old multi-millionaire – released by the BBC from Top Gear earlier this year after hitting a producer who didn’t provide him with a hot meal – described most of the people in HMOs as: “enthusiastic users of heroin or Stella Artois,” who often end up in a “puddle” of their own excrement.

His solution was to hand the resort over to fracking companies, to make the area: “as rich as Saudi Arabia”.

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Blackpool’s first citizen, Mayor Coun Peter Callow, said: “The chap’s going mad.

“He’s already had the sack for thumping someone and he’s lucky to have any sort of job.

“He should get in one of his cars and go for a long drive off one of our short piers.

“He once came to Blackpool to switch on the Illuminations – he landed and went off straight away and didn’t spend any time here.

“He’s just trying to create a bit of a fire at our expense.

“It’s cheap, basically, and that’s what he does.”

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Blackpool Council leader Coun Simon Blackburn said of the refugee comment: “We are creating a plan that will enable us to take a small number of refugees.

“Those plans will be tailored to what is best for those individuals and the families – something which we will find out in due course.”

YOUR GUIDE TO CLARKSON’S OTHER GAFFES

November 2008

Referring to convicted killer Steve Wright, jokes about lorry drivers murdering prostitutes

February 2009

Calls then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’ while in Australia

October 2009

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Said the BBC was obsessed with hiring ‘black muslim lesbians’

August 2010

Used the words ‘special needs’ to refer to a Ferrari he was giving a bad review to

February 2011

Forced to apologise to Mexican ambassador over comments made about country

May 2014

Forced to apologise after out-takes show him mumbling the ‘N’ word in a nursery rhyme

July 2014

Used the term ‘slope’ to refer to an Asian man

October 2014

Drove through Argentina with a numberplate referring to the Falklands conflict