Thread: Jeremy Clarkson on watches

Love this article, did a search with no hits. Regardless if its a repost or not, great write up.


Link to article: I'm calling time on silly watches | Jeremy Clarkson - Times Online

I'm calling time on silly watches
Jeremy Clarkson

After many years of faithful service, my watch has gone wrong. It just chooses random moments of the day to display meaningless times which, speaking as the world’s most punctual person, is a nuisance. Especially as I shall now have to go to a shop and buy a replacement.

Yes, I know I could send it to the menders but, because I really am the most punctual person in the world, what am I supposed to do while it’s away? Use the moon? For me, going around without a watch is worse than going around without my trousers.

Of course I have a back-up. My wife bought it for me many years ago with her last salary cheque and it’s very beautiful. But sadly my eyes are now so old and weary that I can’t read the face properly. Which means I turned up to meet an old friend one hour late last week. And that, in my book, is ruder than turning up and vomiting on him.

It also brings me on to the biggest problem I’ve found in my quest to find a new timepiece. There’s a world of choice out there but everything is unbelievably expensive and fitted with a whole host of features that no one could possibly ever need.

I have flown an F-15 fighter and at no point in the 90-minute sortie did I think: “Damn. I wish my watch had an altimeter because then I could see how far from the ground I am.” All planes have such a device on the dashboard.

Similarly, when I was diving off those wall reefs in the Maldives I didn’t at any time think: “Ooh. I must check my watch to see how far below the surface I have gone.” Thoughtfully, God fitted my head with sinuses, which do that job very well already.

You might think, then, that my demands are simple. I don’t want my new watch to open bottles. I don’t want it to double up as a laser or a garrotte. I just want something that tells the time, not in Bangkok or Los Angeles, but here, now, clearly, robustly and with no fuss. The end.

But it isn’t the end. You see, in recent months someone has decided that the watch says something about the man. And that having the right timepiece is just as important as having the right hair, or the right names for your children, or the right car.

Over dinner the other night someone leant across to a perfect stranger on the other side of the table and said: “Is that a Monte Carlo?” It was, apparently, and pretty soon everyone there was cooing and nodding appreciatively. Except me. I had no idea what a Monte Carlo was.

Then we have James May, my television colleague, who has a collection of watches. Yes, a collection. But despite this he has just spent thousands of pounds on a watch made by IWC. Now I know roughly what he earns and therefore I know what percentage of his income he’s just blown on this watch and I think, medically speaking, he may be mad.

It turns out, however, that his IWC, in the big scheme of things, is actually quite cheap. There are watches out there that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. And I can’t see why.

Except of course, I can. Timex can sell you a reliable watch that has a back light for the hard of seeing, a compass, a stopwatch and a tool for restarting stricken nuclear submarines, all for £29.99. And that’s because the badge says Timex. Which is another way of saying that you have no style, no sense of cool and that you may drive a Hyundai.

To justify the enormous prices charged these days, watchmakers all have idiotic names, like Gilchrist & Soames, and they all claim to make timepieces for fighter pilots and space shuttle commanders and people who parachute from atomic bombs into power boats for a living. What’s more, all of them claim to have been doing this, in sheds in remote Swiss villages, for the last six thousand years.

How many craftsmen are there in the mountains I wonder? Millions, by the sound of it.

Breitling even bangs on about how it made the instruments for various historically important planes. So what? The Swiss also stored a lot of historically important gold teeth. It means nothing when I’m lying in bed trying to work out whether it’s the middle of the night or time to get up.

Whatever, these watch companies give you all this active lifestyle guff and show you pictures of Swiss pensioners in brown store coats painstakingly assembling the inner workings with tweezers, and then they try to flog you something that is more complicated than a slide rule and is made from uranium. Or which is bigger and heavier than Fort Knox and would look stupid on even Puff Diddly.

I think I’ve found an answer, though. There’s a watch called the Bell & Ross BR 01-92 which, according to the blurb, is made in Switzerland from German parts by a company that supplies the American military and is used regularly by people who make a living by being fired from the gun turrets of Abrams M1 tanks while riding burning jet-skis.

Who cares? What I like is that it’s very simple and has big numbers, but what I don’t know is whether it’s reliable and whether people laugh at you because of it at dinner parties. Anyone got one? Anyone know?

Great read! I only wear a watch when time matters. if i have all the time in the world, i don't bother. i have a bad habbit of looking at mine when sitting at a table full of people and it gives off the wrong vibe that i am bored or impatient so i don't bother.

Here's another one:

I suppose that in the days when your fishmonger knew your name and what sort of cod you liked on a Friday, “brand loyalty” made sense. Now we live in a world of supermarkets and corporations, it is the most ridiculous thing on all of God’s green earth. No matter how many loyalty cards you have in your wallet.

That said, I am the worst offender. Even though I know Virgin is the best airline, I always try to fly BA. Even though I know HSBC is in fairly good shape, I bank at Barclays. Even though I know the new style of Levi’s reveals my butt crack when I bend over, I would still never buy a pair of Wranglers.

And this brings me neatly onto the question of watches. For some time now I’ve been on the hunt for a new one but the choice is tricky. I couldn’t have a Breitling because I don’t own an Audi. I couldn’t have a Calvin Klein because they are pants, I couldn’t have a Gucci because I’m not a footballist’s wife, I couldn’t have a TW Steel because my wrist isn’t big enough to sport something that can be seen from space, I couldn’t have a Tissot because I’m not eight and the only thing in the world worse than a fake Rolex is a real one.

Have you noticed something odd about Rolexes? Especially the modern ones that wind automatically when you move your wrist about? A great many owners wear them on their right hand. I jump to no conclusions here but you can feel free.

Mostly, though, I cannot wear any of these watches because I am an Omega man. I have worn a Seamaster for years, not because James Bond has one and not because Neil Armstrong wore something by the same maker on the moon but because on the day I went away to school my parents gave me a Genève Dynamic.

The trouble is that for the past few years Omega has been the Pillsbury dough of Swiss watches. The Terry and June. Omegas were dreary. They were boring to behold. They were Vectras in a world of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The De Ville Prestige, for example, was plainly designed by someone who had a black-and-white telly.

This filled me with despair. I wanted a watch. For the same reasons that I bank at Barclays and wear Levi’s, it had to be an Omega, and it just wasn’t coming up with the goods. It was like Leeds United. Once the home of Peter Lorimer and Gary Sprake but now an also-ran bunch of unimaginative clod-hopping no-hopers.

And then one day, in Hong Kong, I saw it. A new Omega. It’s called the Railmaster and it is a thing of unparalleled beauty. There is no button that owners think will call for help if they find themselves in a crashing helicopter on Kilimanjaro, it is not waterproof to 8,000 metres, there is no stopwatch, there is no swivelling bezel to tell you how much air you have left in your tanks and you even have to wind it up every morning or it will stop. Plainly this is a watch for the sedentary soul. The man with no hang glider or mini sub in his garage. I bought it in an instant.

^ Link to source?

great read. thx for the post!

Good read... The BR 01-92 would be a great choice, either that or a U-Boat Thousands of Feet.

awsome and true on so many levels

Good read, I plan on picking up a B&R soon.

Originally Posted by i1800collect

^ Link to source?

Jeremy Clarkson Alfa Romeo MiTo review | Driving - Times Online

And Swoosh, I'm pretty sure I've seen him wearing a U-Boat before.

Haha this is great! He's a real character, love his style.

Thanks for sharing.