Jeremy Clarkson vows to ‘stay home’ this summer after airport horror

Jeremy Clarkson has said he plans to ‘stay at home’ this summer rather than jet abroad – and encouraged others to do the same. The Clarkson’s Farm star’s recent airport experience seems to have left him disappointed.

The 64-year-old took a trip to Madrid with girlfriend Lisa Hogan last weekend in a bid to soak up the sun. But he said what was “easy” now was not because of “government bureaucracy, border force paranoia and the general feeling at airports that passengers are a bloody nuisance”.

In his latest column for The Sun, he wrote: “So you check in and you’re in a queue full of old ladies and little kids who don’t realize they can’t travel with liquids, they have to take their laptops out. hand luggage and that I can’t go through the X-ray machine with six pans and an ingot in my backpack.

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“Then you walk through a mall selling perfume and suitcases for those who have arrived at the airport with all their holiday clothes in a carry-on bag. And then you’re in an elevator. And then you’re on a train and then you’re on another elevator and then it says your flight is boarding. So you’re making another queue that isn’t moving because your flight isn’t actually boarding.”

He went on to say that the plane from Madrid stopped “at the farthest end of the terminal from baggage claim”, which led to a long walk that caused “any old wounds to start popping up”. After finally joining the queue for an e-passport reader, which “no one can ever work”, he said he got to the front and discovered they were only for people living in the EU.

“So you walk into another hall where you’re presented with a line full of people who don’t speak Spanish. Or English and they don’t have any papers,” he said. “After three hours, your back really starts to hurt and you’re scanning the queue for people who look like they voted for Brexit, because you want to peel them.”

Trying to dissuade people from going through the experience themselves, he concluded: “So you don’t have a coronary. Don’t spend half your vacation in an elevator or standing in line. Stay at home. It will be a beautiful summer here. I can feel it.”