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James was good with guns. It was one of those surprising out-of-character facts about the man that you could only ever find out by working on a show as mad as Top Gear. He was often like that, James, he was very secretive, you could never quite tell where the joke starts and the real him began, if Jeremy even knew the real him. The fact had only stayed in Jeremy's mind because he liked guns, had a certain respect for the single-purpose weapon, but he wasn't good with them. He'd once joined Richard on a small hunting trip with one of his aristocratic friends, trekking through the vast expanse of wooded green land that made his own seem tiny in comparison, and he'd hardly caught a thing. The shame had burned his pride so much he'd never returned to the sport. Of course guns had been banned since the '90s in Britain, and though Jeremy had a shotgun license, it wasn't as if you regularly encountered guns here unless you were hanging around the upper-class hunting-types, so his interest in them had waned, but the fact James was so good with a gun... well, it almost haunted him. James was not a hunting type, he was quiet, reserved and, well, harmless. Obviously James had a shotgun license, but unlike Jeremy and Richard, he hadn't needed to apply for one for the Winter Olympics, it had struck them as odd at the time, that he should already have a license, they'd joked about it at the time, but it was uncomfortable, it made Jeremy's skin itch in a way that he didn't like.
It wasn't until a few years later, when James said something that made it all click into place, something that seared the fact to his mind and kept him up at night. It hadn't been in the script, or discussed beforehand, it seemed to almost just, slip out, in a way that seemed too honest to be a joke. Some how or other they'd been talking about vets having a high suicide rate in the news segment that week, when James suddenly said, "surely its because vets are some of the only people who are still allowed to have handguns?", Jeremy had been perplexed, James often had strange trails of thought that he couldn't necessarily follow till they reached the end, so he took the bait.
"Well what have handguns got to do with it?"
"Well it's easy to kill yourself with a handgun than a shotgun, y'know, its kind of awkward" and he mimed what it was like, putting the shotgun between his legs, getting it under your chin and trying to balance it as you pulled the trigger. Jeremy and Richard could only look at each other in stifled horror, they were on-air, what the fuck?? Jeremy lays awake at night still, staring at the ceiling, telling himself they would've talked about it if it hadn't been on set, he knows they would have, wouldn't they??
He just had to make sure what he was thinking was true, try to play it off as a joke "You're saying, if you had a handgun you'd have shot yourself by now??"
"Oh years ago"
It reverberated throughout his skull and down into his soul, the audience had laughed, maybe slightly nervously, but seemed to take it as a joke none the less, he'd wanted to scream, jump to his feet, say "Don't laugh! He's not joking!" but he couldn't, he was Jeremy Clarkson, he couldn't be serious like that, not on TV, he couldn't ruin the mood, James would undoubtedly just say it was a joke, he was a pathetic guy, that's what people expected of him, why was Clarkson being so sensitive? Everyone knew that they're Top Gear personas were just that, acts, a few traits that couldn't possibly encapsulate who they actually were as people, but the thing with James was that he believed his, when Jeremy's in a generous mood, he'd say that James isn't really that pathetic, but when he lies awake at night, playing the scene over and over in his mind until it rings in his ears, he'd say that it is actually true, James is actually pretty sad, not just by societies' standards either, of course not being a "real man" can make you suicidal, but that flattens what is obviously a deep-seated sadness into something understandable or pathetic, James doesn't really care about being a "real man" or he'd actually try harder, its Jeremy who cares too much about his masculinity, makes him say stupid things, push people away, try too hard and still fail, he's not jealous of James' lack of masculinity, or lack of care, because he values his cause, this is how men should try to be and if some part of him didn't think James was pathetic, then he wouldn't be saying it so much, but that doesn't mean he wants James to die right? James can't possibly think that. Was it his fault?
No. No. That's not his point here. His point is that James is obviously deeply unhappy for other reasons right? Probably some deeply genetic depression that has nothing to do with the rest of the world right? He's probably had since he was a child and its sad because its obviously robbed him of his chance to live a happy masculine life.
Jeremy does care. He doesn't understand, but he does care.
It is Jeremy's masculinity that looses him his job in the end, because it was his mother, it was his dignity and his whole life he'd primed himself to do this, so he did. He doesn't even understand James when he floats the idea of suicide himself, running away, escaping, its cowardly, its easy, its more masochistic to stay alive, and maybe that's why James is still here. He doesn't know, maybe its because that was his lowest point and for James, that was his whole life.
Maybe you can never hope to understand someone whose whole life is their suicide.
That's why the audience laughed. That's why Jeremy could never be good with a gun.