Jeremy Clarkson: Meets the Neighbours is a British television series presented by Jeremy Clarkson. During the course of the series, he drives a 1960s Jaguar E-Type around six European countries.
The show was first shown during 24 May 2002 to 21 June 2002 on BBC Two. Over the series, Clarkson drives around 20,000 miles visiting six European countries to discover just how different their lifestyles are to those in Britain, and whether the reality matches the stereotypical perception of each country.
In the second episode Jeremy Clarkson visits the Netherlands and Belgium. In the Netherlands he strolls through the Amsterdam red light district, visits a sex shop and meets Jan Otten the owner of sex theatre Casa Rosso, has a boat tour through the centre of town and visits a small brothel to discuss the legalisation of prostitution.
Clarkson explores the Dutch bible belt and visiting a reformed church and meets the vicar at the boulevard in Katwijk on the Dutch coast. He visits a Dutch camping and meets people owning a caravan to discover the Dutch caravan culture and he gets a ditch jumping training from a Frisian champion.
Jeremy Clarkson also gives attention to the Gatso meter, a speed camera manufactured in the Netherlands. And Dutch car journalist Frank Jacobs from the Dutch website The Tuf-tuf Club, takes him on a tour of Dutch speed checks.
The Tuf-tuf Club was a Dutch-language website which generated a relatively large number of visitors and publicity by ‘fighting’ against speed checks. The founder – allegedly out of annoyance at the sneaky aspect of speed checks – took photos of the equipment and officials and posted them on the website.
As a link to the Belgium part of the second episode of Meet the Neighbours, Jeremy Clarkson crosses the Dutch – Belgium border with a gigantic lit fake joint.
For the program Featurez did research, joined the recce with producer Andy Wilman, did the set-up and planning of the filming, booked a rental van and did the driving, accompanied the filming and created the gigantic fake joint.