An interview with Jeremy Clarkson by The Independent was never going to be a friendly exchange. Clarkson has built a career out of mocking the social justice proclamations of the liberal newspaper’s bedfellows, and the Independent unloaded a woke broadside at the ‘Grand Tour’ host the moment he swaggered into the room.

Describing the show as “schoolboy sniggering from a trio who have drawn much criticism over the years for encouraging toxic masculinity and cracking colonial-style jokes,” the Independent went on to suggest that “the public is finally tiring of his schtick,” and noted that it’s “tough to justify” a car show in 2019, when the European Parliament has declared a “climate and environment emergency.”

Clarkson is no less conciliatory, calling the interviewers “snowflakes,” and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg a “stupid idiot” and a “weird Swede with a bad temper.”

Rather than deny climate change, Clarkson suggested that the legions of Thunberg-inspired ‘school strikers’ should stay in the classroom and pay attention to their science lessons, rather than hopping on a “carbon fibre yacht” and going to “shout at Donald Trump.”

Indeed, Clarkson seems to have pulled a u-turn on the environment of late. An upcoming feature-length episode of The Grand Tour deals with the consequences of climate change on Vietnam’s rivers, and the avid petrolhead has recently embraced life in the slow lane, taking up farming in Oxfordshire. He says this operation is “completely carbon neutral,” and soaks up the emissions his collection of sports cars generates.

Gaining no traction on the environmental front, the Independent’s hit-squad of woke scribes switched tactics, calling Clarkson “toxically masculine.”