When I first saw V for Vendetta in the cinema aged 15 or 16 I was very impressed, but when I came back to it after reading the original comic the movie seemed cheesy and tacky by comparison.

I watched it again recently. Yes, it’s tacky. The politics of the comic are de-fanged. But it clips along nicely. If the lines aren’t all well-written, the story structure and scenes have momentum. There are enough ponderous and self-important films out there, and a lot more since 2005 when this first came out. Making this film a lot lighter in tone than the comic would not have been my favoured creative choice, but it was a fair creative choice.

In the mid 2000s I used to read Jeremy Clarkson’s film reviews in the Sunday Times. He heartily approved of 300, a fantasy so violently racist it makes Storm Saxon look harmless. He hated The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach’s film about the Irish Revolution. He didn’t like V for Vendetta. He sneered at it and predicted that its message would fail to strike a chord with young people. His words were something like, ‘Kids these days just want to fight for their right to party.’

Six years later, the Guy Fawkes mask from this movie became a global symbol of youth protest against dictators and bankers. In other words, Jeremy Clarkson hadn’t a clue.

Along with the brilliant Children of Men, released one year later, V for Vendetta was part of a cultural backlash against the violence, authoritarianism and fear of the so-called War on Terror. Of course being a right-winger Clarkson didn’t like this message.

But re-watching it now, I figured out another reason why the film might have rubbed him up the wrong way.

There is a character in V for Vendetta named Lewis Prothero, ‘the voice of London,’ a blowhard TV commentator and regime mouthpiece (played by Roger Allam, who also portrays the useless MP in The Thick of It). In one scene Prothero rants over the phone demanding the firing of ‘that Paddy’ who works in the studio. ‘He doesn’t know how to light. He makes my nose look like Big Ben.’

On a completely unrelated note, in 2015 Jeremy Clarkson split his producer’s lip open and called him a ‘lazy Irish c***,’ all because the stupid Paddy could not magically produce a steak in the middle of the night for a pissed Clarkson to stuff into his face.

I doubt that was an isolated incident. Clarkson was probably up to similar behaviour around the time he saw V for Vendetta and declared that young people would not like it. On top of the political message, my theory is that he felt personally attacked. Maybe Roger Allam’s portrayal of a ranting anti-Irish gammon had struck a little too close to home.