I licked half a sleeping pill and was a zombie, imagine what the 1 in 10 adults who take them every night must be like
Columnist Jeremy Clarkson warns about the dangerous reliance of sleeping pills after being knocked for six without even taking a full one.
IT’S been a busy week. I was up at five in the morning on Tuesday for an early morning flight to New York, where I started filming as soon as the plane landed.
After a quick bite to eat, I went to bed and woke at three in the morning with jet lag.
So I wrote some scripts until eight and then drove, at high speed, and with the cameras turning constantly, to Toronto in Canada to catch a plane home.
I don’t mind admitting that as I reached the airport, I was knackered.
My lungs hurt. My buttocks were broken and because the car I’d driven non-stop for nine hours was louder than The Who in their glory days, I was stone deaf.
Knowing that this might happen, a friend had given me a sleeping pill before I set off.
Now, I don’t like sleeping pills. The first time I took one, I woke up in Sharjah and had to look on an atlas to see where it was.
And the second time I slept for about three days, and afterwards, drove so dreamily that on the Hammersmith roundabout 16 people honked their horns at me.
I vowed there and then I’d never take another. But when I boarded in Toronto and discovered that, as usual, it was hotter than the inside of a furnace, I knew I’d have to give in.
Being mindful of the fact that I would have to go to work after landing in Heathrow, I broke it in half and licked it gently a couple of times and . . .
Next thing I knew the stewardess was saying that British Airways was not like the Circle Line and I couldn’t just sit there until my stop came round again.
MOST READ IN OPINION
So I lurched through the airport, got lost, went up and down in a lift a few times, took an unnecessary train to a random terminal and then had an argument with a passport machine. Which turned out to be an ATM.
I was driven into London, where I sat at the wrong desk and wrote a long and very boring review of a car I haven’t driven for Top Gear magazine, which sacked me more than a year ago.
For lunch, I had an apple, on to which I squirted a hefty dollop of ketchup and then I went outside for a cigarette, forgetting that I’d given up. And that I didn’t have any.
I then went through my emails and accepted three different invitations to parties that are all happening this evening.
And now I can’t remember where any of them are.
And do you know what’s scary about this? I’d only licked half a pill, whereas one in ten adults in Britain are taking a whole sleeping pill EVERY NIGHT.
Which explains why only 75 per cent of the country’s adults are in full-time work, despite the booming economy.
Most of the rest are sitting in front of their washing machines all day, wondering why Pointless hasn’t come on yet.
— I’M sure we were all very startled this week to hear that a bull terrier that had somehow taken crack cocaine had attacked and killed its owner.
What surprised me even more, is that at the inquest it was revealed that, had the dog been driving a car at the time of the attack, it would have been eight times over the drug drive limit.
There’s a drug drive limit?
I never knew that. I’ve always assumed that if you’d taken any kind of any illegal drug, driving would be out of the question.
But I guess it does explain why the drivers from a certain mini cab firm – that shall be nameless – do tend to be weaving about on the wrong side of the road pretty much constantly.
— A HEADLINE on the BBC website this week said “Porsche driver shoots homeless man in row”.
They would argue that this is completely unbiased reporting.
Yes. But what they mean is “Rich bastard shoots poor person”. And that’s not unbiased at all.
How is this for an iDEA?
SO. It’s emerged that the new iPhone is £280 cheaper in certain parts of the US than it is here.
Well how’s this for a plan?
Instead of buying one at your local Apple store, get a last-minute flight across the Atlantic and buy the phone there.
That way you get the phone AND a free weekend in New York.
Taking the Michael
LIKE everyone in the real world, I can’t help rolling my eyes when some half-witted celebrity decides to call their new baby Wardrobe or Chernobyl or Cheese Soufflé.
Frank Zappa started the trend by calling his daughter Moon Unit and since that’s the best silly name ever, there’s no point trying to beat it.
George Clooney obviously agrees, saying this week he wasn’t even tempted to call his twins something “ridiculous” and went instead for Ella and Alexander.
Mind you, this might have something to do with the fact he’s married to a girl called Anal.
I met a man once called Mike Hunt. He really was.
And he was really furious with his parents, saying his life had been ruined and he’d be super-careful with his children. As a result, he called his son Justin.
And saved Mike for the poor infant’s middle name.
Feeling dam proud
Right next to the Hoover Dam.
Luckily for him, nine of the Dam’s ten turbines were switched off at the time or they would have been picking microscopic bits of him out of the taps in Las Vegas for the next 40 years.
Needless to say, when he reached the other side, exhausted but in one piece, he was arrested and, guess what?
Yup. He turned out to be a Brit.
Proud of you, son.
Meal for a right Charlie
Needless to say, there were immediate noisy calls for security to be beefed up.
But trust me on this, there’s an even bigger menace lurking in the shadows at that school. Something which could bring down the monarchy.
The canteen serves lentils. Now, I don’t eat lentils for two reasons.
Firstly, they taste like the mould on a urinal tablet. I’d rather French kiss a camel than put one in my mouth.
And secondly, they are the staple diet of the Loony Left. Show me someone with plaited armpit hair, a G-Wiz on the drive and a copy of The Guardian on the table and I can pretty much guarantee they’ll have a fridge full of lentils.
Prince George must be warned about this.
Prince George arriving for his first day at school... before he was served lentils
He’s going to be king one day and we can’t have him turning into the sort of person who talks to plants, drones on and on about the environment, how modern technology is ruining the world and how we must buy his organic shortbread from Poundbury rather than a tin of biscuits from Poundland . . .
Oh, hang on a minute.
— GARY LINEKER retweeted a message this week saying Sir Richard Branson can hardly sit in the ruins of his hurricane-smashed Caribbean home and moan about climate change when he owns an airline. Hmmm.
I hardly think His Linekerness is in a position to comment because I presume he has a car and a fridge and a mobile phone charger, which in their own small way contribute to the severity of hurricanes.
Plus I know he’s been to America. And how did he get there? I’m fairly sure it wasn’t in a coracle.