Jeremy Clarkson is a great polar explorer like Captain Scott, historian says
JEREMY Clarkson is a great polar explorer like Captain Scott, a top historian claims.
Dr Linda Parker hailed his race to the North Pole on Top Gear in 2007 as a “watershed moment”.
Clarkson, 64, is now seen on his Diddly Squat Farm for Amazon Prime show Clarkson’s Farm.
But 17 years ago he and co-host James May raced 450 miles across frozen Canadian seas in a modified pick-up truck for a BBC Top Gear special.
Dr Parker, a polar expert, said they “pushed the boundaries of what’s possible”.
Clarkson’s “derring-do” was, she said, reminiscent of pioneers like Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
She wrote in a magazine article: “The Top Gear expedition was a watershed moment in the development of polar research and exploration.
“Light-hearted and comedic as it was, Clarkson and May’s attempt was in many ways in the same tradition of the early pioneers.”
The pair beat their colleague Richard Hammond, who was on a traditional dog sled, to the magnetic North Pole.
Dr Parker said Scott would have loved “navigational aids and motorised vehicles” to reach the South Pole in 1912, adding: “Success meant everything.”