It's customary on such occasions for Clarkson to offer a hollow apology, and he did not disappoint. "If the BBC and I have caused any offence, I'm quite happy to apologise for it alongside them."
The offended were not placated, but then trade union leaders are paid not to be placated. But there are two reasons why they, like the Mexican ambassador who objected to Top Gear's characterisation of his countrymen as "lazy, feckless, flatulent", will be unlikely to claim Clarkson's head.
The first is technical: it was a joke. However disagreeable Clarkson's comments might have sounded, they were obviously intended not as a policy recommendation to the Government but as a piece of shocking - if not particularly amusing - humour. The second, and more significant, is practical: Clarkson is one of the BBC's biggest stars.
Top Gear is a global success, reaching 150 million screens around the world, and aside from the difficulty of seeing Clarkson join Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand in an exodus of opinionated talent, the BBC would also be reluctant to lose a revenue stream said to be worth £33 million ($66 million) a year.
Yet, as Clarkson's appearance on the faultlessly bland The One Show demonstrated, the presenter and the BBC remain an awkward, not to say troublesome, fit. To many of its supporters and detractors, the BBC embodies a liberal, tolerant, culturally anxious sensibility often described as "politically correct". Clarkson is the nanny-state-hating, red-tape-trouncing, say-what-you-think personification of libertarian conservatism.
The wary relationship is mutually beneficial. It allows Clarkson to appear a maverick outrider, constantly pushing back against the forces of bureaucracy. That's no small achievement when you consider that in reality he is a middle-aged multimillionaire who lives in home counties comfort and is a friend of the Prime Minister.
For the BBC, Clarkson provides, along with the income, a ready rebuttal to the charge of institutional pinko leftism.
It could be said that middle England didn't know that it was engaged in a freedom fight until Clarkson drove up and started ranting about speed cameras. But, over the past 20 years, with the BBC as his improbable platform, he has become the booming voice of affluent indignation, the rebellious pin-up for frustrated middle managers, the Che Guevara of the Range Rover-owning classes.
Clarkson, who is now 51, grew up in a middle-class household in Doncaster. His parents made their money selling stuffed Paddington Bears.
Clarkson was sent to Repton public school, from where, he has said, he was expelled for drinking and smoking. Forgoing university, he started out in journalism at the Rotherham Advertiser. He went on to work on a variety of local papers before forming the Motoring Press Agency with a fellow journalist in 1984. The agency conducted road tests and car reviews for local papers and led to his writing a column for Performance Car.
This year, while protesting at Clarkson's "casual racism", the comedian Steve Coogan recalled reading that early column. "It was slightly annoying but unfailingly funny," he wrote, summing up the conflicting feelings of much of Clarkson's audience. Clarkson practically invented the modern car review: irreverent, comically exaggerated, yet always retaining a fan's passion - except, possibly, when it came to Hyundais.
Given his physical appearance - testicular jowls, a pubic hairstyle and a roadie's sense of fashion - television didn't seem an obvious career move. But in 1988 his distinctive style and prolific output brought him the job of presenter on Top Gear, then a car show with a magazine format.
He left after 12 years for his own chat show. It's fair to say that celebrity pow-wows were not his forte and he returned to a relaunched Top Gear a couple of years later.
Given the right opportunity, however, he's capable of finding another gear. In the 2002 TV series Great Britons, he drew on his knowledge, enthusiasm and humour to produce a powerful celebration of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He has also enjoyed lucrative success with a series of books - one a year since 2004.
There seems to be an incurable devilment within him, an adolescent urge to let loose on the pieties and hypocrisies of lesser mortals. The effect is not always unappealing, as for example when he punched the former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan at the 2004 British Press Awards, but it's seldom edifying.
After the year he's had, Clarkson might have been expected to retreat quietly from 2011. It began with the Mexican furore and things reached their personal low point in October when he lifted an injunction on his first wife. She had been prevented from discussing the affair she alleges they conducted during his second marriage, to his manager, Frances Cain, with whom he has three children.
Having allowed the tabloids to feast on his private life, perhaps he sought to reclaim the headlines with one of his trademark pronouncements.
Perhaps he couldn't resist subjecting the BBC to yet another loyalty test. Maybe he really did want to shoot the strikers. Certainly there was something premeditated and wilful about what Clarkson said on The One Show, just as there was something reflexive and inexorable about the response it engendered.
But the union Unison belatedly realised that rather than audition for the role of po-faced moaner, a smarter reaction was to invite Clarkson to come and work with a healthcare assistant.
There's probably more chance of the presenter's becoming a fashion muse, although he has done sterling work in hospitals with injured soldiers.
But at least the union moved away from the Clarkson binary drama of either guffaws of approval or howls of fury. As with the boy racer at the traffic lights, sometimes the best policy is to let him shoot off on his own. That way he can embarrass no one but himself.
THE CLARKSON FILE
Born: April 11, 1960 in Doncaster, the son of a travelling salesman and a teacher.
Best of times: Landing the Top Gear job in 1988 and relanding it in the hugely successful relaunched version in 2002. Steering Isambard Kingdom Brunel to number two in the list of all-time Great Britons.
Worst of times: For most people, the multiple controversies, such as when he was given a dressing down for calling former Prime Minister Gordon Brown a "silly c**t" at a recording of Top Gear in 2009, but perhaps not with Clarkson. His first wife's recent kiss and tell would have hurt more.
What he says: "Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary ... that's what gets you."
"I loathe ageing. I look in the mirror and still think of myself as 19. When I see 19-year-olds in the street, I still think I'm one of them."
What others say: "A dazzling hero of political incorrectness." - Tony Parsons
"I suggest that, instead of getting into an overpowered 4x4 and ripping up the countryside, he responds to one of those emails that offers to enhance the size of his manhood." - George Monbiot
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