Clarkson: 'Let foxes eat bodies of suicide victims'

HE CAUSED an outcry when he suggested shooting striking public sector workers - and he routinely courts controversy - but Jeremy Clarkson may have gone too far with remarks about "selfish" suicides.

The Top Gear presenter is at the centre of a storm of outrage today after he used his Sun newspaper column to berate those who commit suicide by throwing themselves onto a train line for selfishly inconveniencing travellers.

His claim that suicide is "selfish" has been dubbed "extraordinarily tasteless" but it was his advice to the emergency services dealing with the aftermath of a death on the rails which has caused most upset.

As the Mail on Sunday reports, Clarkson wants the process of dealing with such suicides speeded up. He advised: "Change the driver, pick up the big bits of what’s left of the victim, get the train moving as soon as possible and let foxy woxy and the birds nibble away at the smaller, gooey parts that are far away or hard to find."

He added: "It is a very selfish way to go because the disruption it causes is immense."

Marjorie Wallace of mental health charity Sane told The Observer: "The selfish person is the one who rates being late by minutes or hours as more important than a person losing their lives for ever."

Some see Clarkson's decision to write about suicide in the week following the death of Wales football manager Gary Speed as inviting criticism to the point of being self-destructive. 

A poll for the Mail on Sunday appears to support that view, with 44 per cent saying CNN presenter Piers Morgan was right to call Clarkson a “nasty little twerp” - against 35 per cent who disagreed.

Clarkson also used his column to deny apologising for tongue-in-cheek remarks about wanting to shoot striking public sector workers "in front of their families" on the BBC's The One Show.

It had been reported that he had said sorry - but Clarkson now says the apology made by the BBC on his behalf was for remarks about suicide he made in the same broadcast. ·