英国广播公司（BBC）Top Gear节目的主持人Jeremy Clarkson因工作原因曾游历世界许多国家。因为他眼光挑剔，一向对各国事务讽刺挖苦。然而，近日在新西兰拍片之后，他却打破一生的习惯首次对一个海外国家赞叹有加，称新西兰为“世界上真正的圣地”。



据Stuff新闻网报导，Clarkson上周来新西兰为他的汽车展示拍摄片段，其中包括一段从Coromandel到新西兰最北点的旅程。之后他在《伦敦周日星报》的一个专栏中写道：“（新西兰）实在令人惊叹！你必须咬住手背，才能控制自己不大声叫出来‘太美了’！”

Clarkson还开玩笑表示，说上帝没将新西兰定为圣地而定在中东，很可能是搞错了。

事实上， Clarkson作为媒体人一直都给人十分刻薄的印象，他总以挑剔和批判的态度来评论许多国家的人和事物。2007年，他曾使用“懒惰、软弱无能、空虚”等词汇来形容墨西哥人；2005年，他在评价一辆宝马车之前，故意讽刺地行了一个纳粹的军礼；2011年，他在印度拍片时对当地的厕所嗤之以鼻；而今年，他又对悉尼的海港大桥表示不屑，称该桥设计太夸张了。

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Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has broken the habit of a lifetime and said something nice about a foreign country - namely New Zealand.

Clarkson, who has referred to Mexicans as "lazy, feckless, flatulent" oafs, given a Nazi salute in an episode about BMWs, and labelled Australians "convicts", raves about New Zealand in his column in today's London Sunday Times.

New Zealand, he writes, is "absolutely stunning; bite-the-back-of-your-hand-to-stop-yourself-from-crying-out lovely".

Clarkson was briefly in New Zealand last week to film an episode of his BBC motoring show, including a race from Coromandel to the Far North between a car and an America's Cup yacht.

He has since left for the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen - by the sounds of it, regretfully.

With characteristic humility, Clarkson uses his newspaper column to advise God that he made a mistake when choosing the Middle East as his religious base.

"If you were God and you were all-powerful, you wouldn't select Bethlehem as a suitable birthplace for your only child because it's a horrible place.

"And you certainly wouldn't let him grow up anywhere in the Holy Land.

"What you'd actually do is choose New Zealand."

If God really were all-knowing, continues Clarkson, "children at Christmas time today would be singing 'Oh little town of Wellington' and people would not cease from mental fight until Jerusalem had been built in Auckland's green and pleasant land."

Perhaps the most startling compliment, however, is Clarkson's claim that if God had got it right, "Jesus would have been from Palmerston North", a stark deviation from the verdict of his countryman John Cleese, who once said the North Island city should be renamed "suicide capital of New Zealand" because "if you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick".

Clarkson is better known for mean-minded and borderline racist insults than glowing compliments.

In 2007 he attracted flak for not only calling the Malaysian-manufactured Perodua Kelisa the "worst car in the world", but suggesting that it had been built by "jungle people who wear leaves as shoes".

In 2005 he gave a Nazi salute while reviewing a car from the German company BMW, and said the vehicle's satellite-navigation "only goes to Poland".

While filming in India in 2011 he drove through slums in a Jaguar fitted with a wooden-seated toilet in the boot, which he said was "perfect for India, because everyone who comes here gets the trots".

Immediately before arriving in New Zealand, Clarkson was in Australia, where he called Sydney Harbour "a river", suggested the city's Harbour Bridge was over-engineered, and referred to a group of press photographers as "convicts" - comments that saw him labelled "the biggest muppet in the world", "obnoxious" and "gutless" by the Australian press.