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Jeremy Clarkson has hit out at Chris Packham over his recent comments about Taylor Swift.
Last month, the Springwatch host and nature enthusiast criticised the pop singer over her frequent use of private jets.
Packham, 63, called on Swift to use a different mode of transport to travel between locations on her worldwide Eras Tour, which saw her perform in London earlier this month. She will return for five more shows at Wembley stadium in August.
In his latest column for The Sun, Clarkson, 64, said it was “hard to keep up” with Packham’s “pontifications” and claimed his comments to the “Cruel Summer” singer amounted to “bullying”.
He went on to claim that Packham’s criticisms of Swift prove that he “has no knowledge of what it’s like to be properly famous”.
“Packham is reasonably well known among the nation’s ramblers and bingo enthusiasts, but he has no knowledge of what it’s like to be properly famous," Clarkson wrote.
“So famous that you are physically mobbed by a braying hoard wherever you are in the world.”
The former Top Gear host continued by listing the reasons why it would be unreasonable to expect Swift to use a commercial aeroplane, such as the inevitable hordes of fans and the scheduling troubles caused by delayed flights.
“So what Mr Packham is doing by kind of ordering her to fly with the masses is tantamount to bullying. Because she can’t,” he concluded.
Clarkson took one last swipe at Packham’s level of fame, writing that he “hopes one day [Packham] releases an album that propels him to global superstardom because then we’d see how long it’d take him to ask his agent to book a G5”.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain in June, Packham revealed that he had personally reached out to Swift over the issue.
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“I’ve asked her to think about the future of all her young fans,” he said. “She could send a very symbolic gesture to millions of people by saying that she was going to stop using those jets.”
Clarkson’s latest comments are part of an ongoing feud between the two presenters, who have locked horns on previous occassions.
Last year, Packham called Clarkson a “cockchafer” for criticising Sir David Attenborough’s for highlighting climate change on Planet Earth.
“There used to be a time when Sir Attenborough would tell us all about the animal he’d found. Now all we ever get is: ‘Here’s a see-through fish with an orange stomach, and its future is threatened by climate change,’” wrote Clarkson in his column.
Responding to Packham’s foul-mouthed tweet, the Clarkson’s Farm star corrected Packham’s grammar. “It’s world’s. Not ‘worlds,’” replied Clarkson.
