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The BBC has sacked the other motoring correspondent and TV presenter named Jeremy, Jeremy Clarkson. Memo to BBC Director General Tony Hall: my name is Jeremy and I'll do the show for half the $24 million a year Clarkson reportedly was earning.

My pitch is simple. Since the mid-1980s, I've been writing and broadcasting about cars, the business and various other odds and sods in and around the automotive game. I have the background and experience for the job.

I can be grumpy from time to time, sure, but once I get the BBC gig I'll enjoy the freedom and indulgences of a taxpayer-funded, no-commercials-needed, public broadcaster trying to compete in a media world where off-the-wall oddities are prized.

We can all understand how Clarkson blew up after a long day's shoot, for reportedly not being able to get a steak and fries at his hotel; reports say hot food was no longer being served. He is coddled and feted and rewarded for being obnoxious, rude and childish. Millions tune in to Top Gear to watch a 54-year-old man with a baritone voice behave like a spoiled infant who can't get what he wants for dinner. Delicious irony, no?

The thing is, Clarkson truly is an accomplished writer and TV personality. He is staggeringly funny in an "oh-my-God-did-he-really-say/do-that" way – like your thrice-divorced drunk uncle at Christmas. Whether he's putting a torch to a Toyota Hilux pickup or hosing down an Opel with the putrid contents of a honey wagon, his outlandish takes on cars and the world are staggeringly amusing.

When he says the Volkswagen Golf "is an offbeat German art-house film featuring laughing clowns and naked women fighting with deranged crows" he is trending towards being the automotive version of Oscar Wilde.

When he writes that the Toyota Corolla was "deliberately designed to be as uninteresting as possible" he boldly says what everyone knows but won't say out of shyness or good manners. BMW's X1, he once concluded, "looks like a Hyundai that's been subjected to a thousand years of wind erosion," adding, "If it were a book, it would have no plot and a stupid cover and it would fall to pieces in the sun. But it isn't a book. And neither is it a car. It's rubbish." He's not fired or sanctioned for this sort of thing, but lauded and rewarded.

Audi's Q3? "Not practical. Not nice to drive. And technologically, not thought out well, either. So what's to be done if you want a car that looks like it could go off road but won't?" Chevrolet's Orlando? "Handling? Terrible. The ride? Terrible. Seat comfort? Terrible. It was plainly styled by a man who gets excited at the thought of house bricks, and finished off on the inside with a range of plastics that feel like Cellophane."

When on Top Gear he was found to be the owner of the "gayest" car in England, a monstrous Mercedes coupe, it's hilarious because Clarkson is a six-foot, five-inch giant of a man, with flapping jowls and an everyman paunch. He wanders the world slightly bemused. He doesn't look like Brad Pitt or Ryan Reynolds, but instead like his core fan base.

Even in middle age and worth tens of millions, he manages to affect the air of an everyman forever surprised and befuddled by the world. His genius is that he almost instantly articulates his rawest observations, blithely spitting them and frequently acting on the impulses they trigger – even to the point of lighting Christmas gifts on fire before a live audience.

BBC boss Hall in the sacking described Clarkson as a "huge talent" and renewing Top Gear in 2016 without Clarkson will be a "big challenge." Let me help you, Lord Hall (really, he's a Lord). I pledge to do my best to shed all inhibitions, to be a two-year-old with the education and experience of a grown-up. I will strive to embrace being spoiled, to be outlandish and always unbridled, falling just short of violence against others, of course.

Give me the chance. Even one year will gild my retirement years.

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