Jeremy Clarkson, star of the hit series Clarkson’s Farm, recently revealed a surprising story about spending a night in a French jail – but the incident actually happened nearly 40 years ago.
In a new episode of his Prime Video show, Clarkson recounted how he was arrested in France after an unusual restaurant experience at just 19 years old. The trouble began when Clarkson found a slug in his salad at a restaurant called La Pomme d’Amour. The apologetic waiter offered him unlimited free drinks to make up for it, and Clarkson, seizing the opportunity, drank quite a bit.
Later that evening, French police detained him, assuming he was heavily intoxicated. Clarkson tried to explain that his condition was due to having eaten a slug and the complimentary drinks, but a language barrier complicated things. Attempting to say “I ate a slug” in French, he mistakenly said “Je mange un escargot sans maison” — which means “I eat a snail without a house,” rather than using the correct word limace for slug.
The police misunderstood his explanation and thought he was simply drunk, leading to his overnight stay in jail. Reflecting on the bizarre event, Clarkson joked, “They just thought: ‘This man is definitely paralytic.’ I got thrown into prison because I didn’t know the French word for slug.”
