Jeremy Clarkson has lashed out at Brexit, saying it makes him want to “weep” and “hasn’t made our lives better in any way”.
The former Top Gear host, 64, called out Leave voters who opted to withdraw the UK from the European Union in the 2016 referendum.
“It’s not so bad if they put their hands up and admit they made a mistake. But if I encounter someone who still thinks it was all a brilliant idea, I get so cross my hair catches fire and my teeth start to itch,” he wrote in his column for The Times.
Clarkson referenced Sir Alan Sugar’s recent tirade about Brexit, agreeing that it’s “the biggest mistake in his lifetime”.
The Grand Tour star said he would join The Apprentice star in “begging to be let back in,” adding, “Brexit hasn’t made our lives better in any way that [he] can see”.
He raged that it’s easier to get from Iraq to Turkey and Rwanda into Tanzania than to leave post-Brexit Britain.
Clarkson described all the difficulties he has faced travelling abroad with a film crew since Brexit, meaning he “must list everything you’re taking and its value and its serial number”.
He shared his frustration that his longtime partner, Lisa Hogan, who is an Irish citizen, will often be at their hotel while he’s still waiting in the non-EU passport queue.
The broadcaster recalled making a particularly complicated journey to the Netherlands filled with checks and forms to film his Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm, which made him want to “sit down in the gutter and weep”.
He also talked about waiting for hours at both ends of his trip to Calais despite staff undertaking no security checks.
“I have crossed many tricky borders over the years and the paperwork always takes time. But nothing has ever taken as long as it took us to get from post-Brexit England into France,” he wrote.
Last month, business mogul Sugar told BBC Breakfast that if he were the Prime Minister he would go “on bended knees” to Brussels and “beg” to rejoin.
“The full ramifications of us not being in the EU are starting to really take its toll,” he said.
“If I were the PM I would be coming along on my bended knees and asking to be allowed back in.
“It's all to do with trade, free trade, small people, small traders can't ship goods abroad now... it's a terrible situation. How do we get out of it? My honest opinion - get back in the EU.”
Sugar has previously said Brexit made the UK a “laughing stock” to the rest of the world.
