"OH NO! I'm turning into Jeremy Clarkson!"

Now, I appreciate this is a somewhat shocking statement to make, particularly when only a couple of weeks ago my fellow columnist, Julian Cole, exposed Mr Clarkson to something of a tirade, accompanied by a headline containing the less than complimentary phrase "ranting twerp".

What made my personal insight even more curious is the fact it was prompted by watching the regional television news - which is not an experience usually associated with gaining an insight into anything.

What happened was this. The presenter, having cheerfully announced that the football would be following soon, then put on his serious and portentous voice to announce that a huge (if you'll pardon the pun) proportion of children in Yorkshire were overweight or even obese.

"I don't believe it," I cried, morphing briefly into Victor Meldrew. "How do they know? Have they actually gone out and measured all these kids?"

It was gently pointed out to me that schools may indeed have weighed the children, but I wasn't about to be put off.

Such statistics were meaningless, I fumed, usually used by people in Government departments or pressure groups to scare people into accepting a particular point of view.

It was then I had the sudden realisation that I was starting to sound like the aforementioned Top Gear presenter "going off on one". Why was I being so dismissive of the juvenile weight warning - after all, surely anything that might motivate the more apathetic sections of society to take action to avert obesity problems in the young had to be worthwhile?

But that wasn't the point. The point was that I suspected someone was fiddling figures for their own purposes, and I was annoyed about it.

This is the rich vein of anger that Clarkson has struck upon. He has achieved popularity not only with fellow car enthusiasts (or "petrolheads", as they are apparently known), but with a whole swathe of people who are fed up of being talked down to and spoonfed opinions by those who think they know better.

He's not alone in this, of course. Indeed, he may not be the best or the cleverest of his kind, whom I shall refer to from now on as "Jeremys". He is, however, the most high-profile, which makes him a good starting point.

Jeremys do not have to be right about everything. You do not have to agree with them to find them useful or stimulating. They are often a complete disaster if they are put in a position where they can make any decisions. The useful purpose they serve in society is to point the finger, to raise issues, to question the orthodoxies of the age, whatever they may be.

Take the green debate. I am old enough to remember proper winters. I only had to feel the lack of chill in the January air and watch the rising floodwaters in recent days to conclude that climate change is an everyday reality. It also seems fairly logical to me that human behaviour is probably to blame, and that industrial processes and pollution of various kinds are likely to be major factors in all of this.

But that doesn't stop me welcoming one of the Jeremys going on the offensive in response to some of the hot air (again, pardon the pun) that's generated by the green debate. I strongly suspect that if we ever really get to the bottom of what's happening to our world we will find that, even if they were fundamentally correct, a surprising number of "facts" peddled to us by environmental experts will have been wrong, and some complete twaddle. That view is based on the simple belief that no human, or group of humans, ever gets it completely right all the time.

The trouble is, history tells us humans all too often believe they have got it completely right, and will use whatever means are at their disposal - force, moral blackmail, fear, or even tweaked statistics - to impose their views on others.

That's where the Jeremys come in; prodding, criticising, and, most important of all, asking awkward questions. When such questions are met by intolerance, or at least by barely suppressed anger, to me that's a pretty good sign the emperor's new clothes aren't quite as great as he likes to make out.

So don't shoot the Jeremys. Annoying as they may be, we actually need them.