Normally, when you want to tear down a house, you call in a good bulldozer. A wrecking ball. You know, normal house-razing hardware. But if you’re Jeremy Clarkson, you instead opt for some explosives to blow it all to hell. You can’t see it, but I’m wearing my surprised face.
Jezza was granted permission to demolish his five-bedroom farmhouse in the English countryside, reports The Telegraph, proving that a hammer is really the only metaphor some people need to guide their lives. In the farmhouse’s place will go a brand-new, 12,173 sq-ft home on the plot of land Clarkson calls “Diddly Squat Farm.”
Neighbors within a half mile radius got letters that warned them about the blast, and they heard a bunch of explosions the following afternoon. Here are some of the memorable accounts pulled from The Telegraph story:
One neighbor, 44, who spotted the pile of rubble, said, “It’s just typical Clarkson isn’t it? Any normal person would get in people to take it apart conventionally, but he blows it up. He blew up the entire house. All that’s left is a huge pile of Costwold stone.”
Another neighbor, who saw the explosion, said, “All you could see was gray smoke each time they blew part of it up, but it was very loud in my house...They started blowing it up about 3:15 p.m. and finished around 4:10 p.m....There was a funeral being held at the village at 2:30 p.m., which was still on when the explosions started.
The Telegraph notes that The Grand Tour was filming in the area during the week of the explosion. Who knows, maybe the demolition added some production value. We’ve always known that Jeremy Clarkson loves to blow shit up.
(H/t to James!)