Jeremy Clarkson has been voted the UK’s sexiest man and it makes total (weird) sense to me

Granted ‘farmer’ Clarkson may not jump straight to mind when you are thinking about who women are secretly crushing over but that’s why I can believe it, says Fleur Britten. You can never predict who or what women find attractive...

Our crushes are often peculiarly left-field (PA/Getty/iStock)

Move over, David Gandy. The UK and Ireland’s sexiest man has just been crowned and his identity may take you by surprise. For it is none other than the 64-year-old TV presenter turned farmer Jeremy Clarkson, beating off the more “traditional” heartthrobs such as Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland and Idris Elba.

But it must be true because the victory is Clarkson’s for the second year running, as voted for by 2,000 female members of the dating site, IllicitEncounters.com. But then, as so many women have discovered the hard way, attraction and logic are not always the keenest of bedfellows. It may be of interest to other sixtysomething round-bellied men that a chiselled jawbone, a full head of hair and a gleaming set of American teeth will only get you so far when it comes to our deepest desires.

Our crushes can often be strange, weird, come left-field and make absolutely no sense at all. Here are just a sprinkling of some that I have heard of recently.

The quiet nerds

It’s not all about the A-list leading man. So obvious, so attention-seeking. No, what’s really sexy is the unassuming allure of the bookish nerd. I give you Ian Hislop, for example – the 63-year-old editor of Private Eye since 1986 and one of the two Have I Got News for You team captains.

Hislop is not one to be thirsting for compliments, he’s busy tuning into his BS radar and skewering politicians. Not all heroes wear capes, right? There is even a Mumsnet thread titled: “I think I am a little bit in love with Ian Hislop”, with various mothers concurring that he is “The Thinking Woman’s Crumpet”; one even gets giddy over his “cute shaky-shoulders laugh”. Swoon.

Other Quiet Nerds oozing a sense of mystery and intrigue include the Radio 4 Today programme presenter Nick Robinson, the softly-spoken Labour bigwig Jack Straw, and that ultimate of disarmers, Louis Theroux. 

Louis Theroux arrives at the 2023 GQ Men of the Year Awards (Getty)

The softies

There surely can’t be a more cuddly antidote to the Big Bad World than a bit of fantasy softcore sofa time with our favourite gentlemen off the telly. Believe me when I tell you that there are many women who would push Gogglebox’s Mary Killen off her William Morris-printed armchair to get snuggly with her teddy-bear husband, the artist and fellow Gogglebox star Giles Wood.

But – hankies at the ready – the ultimate in emotionally liberated men is the master potter Keith Brymer Jones from the BBC’s The Great Pottery Throw Down. Rarely without a tear in his eye at the big reveals of those amateur-made ceramics, here is a man manly enough to wear his heart on his sleeve, and if he can give such a great massage to a lump of clay, well, you can see where I am going. 

The naughty and not that nice ones

When it comes to unlikely crushes, there are few weirder than the 59-year-old TV presenter and contrarian-beyond-compare Piers Morgan. After all, he doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being The Nice Guy.

As so many women have discovered the hard way, attraction and logic are not always the keenest of bedfellows

But then, as every decent chap has always lamented, that’s exactly his appeal – Morgan would not be the first Naughty-but-not-so-Nice man to be a woman’s achilles heel.

Given that most celebrity Bad Boys at least offer looks in the package too (Will Smith, Colin Farrell), it just goes to show how good Morgan is at being bad. Arguing and picking fights is his strong suit, which makes him all the more, umm, passionate. Apparently.

Leading men

Ah, power – that most intoxicating of aphrodisiacs. Honestly, put a man in a Savile Row suit, give him a microphone and some people to boss about, and suddenly – OK, occasionally – women are theirs.

Surely this can be the only reasonable explanation behind our curious attraction towards various front-bench politicians, such as (I hear) Keir Starmer (but only when he’s not wearing a tie and you can see a peek of his humanness) and James Cleverly entering stage right (that smile I’m told).

Dominic Cummings has (surprisingly) captured the hearts of some women (Getty)

Even Dominic Cummings was branded “sexy” and “kinda hot” when he appeared before MPs in 2021 with an open-necked shirt. A touch of the cool, casual Austin hipster dad maybe? Whatever it is, it’s never who you think it’s going to be, we know it’s wrong and that’s why we like it.

Wayne Rooney

That the former England footballer turned manager can be deemed crushworthy at all is such an intriguing concept, we believe he deserves his very own category. How on earth to unpick the je ne sais quoi, then? Maybe it’s the plumber vibes – chuck in a Gas Safe gilet and some utility trousers, and Rooney is recast as a fantasy figure completely.

Still, it leaves many unanswered questions, though, such as: where did Rooney’s neck go? Why does his new hair look like Velcro? And can we really believe he is anybody’s weird crush? Well, Coleen Rooney saw something – it might be a struggle but there are a few women out there who are seeing something too. Although, they may be squinting.