Viewers baffled at Jeremy Clarkson’s accent change after watching his first ever appearance on Top Gear

When it come to recognisable voices on the telly there are few more distinct than that of former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson.

During his time on the show audiences grew accustomed to his very unique way of saying phrases like '...in the world', 'power' and of course 'how hard can it be'.

Stick on pretty much any episode of Top Gear with Clarkson presenting and you're bound to get a few of these scattered throughout the show.

They're often interspersed with pronunciations of his own genius and the idiocy of his co-presenters before the consequences of his own actions come back to bite him in the arse.

While that's the Clarkson many Top Gear viewers will know, and indeed the same version shows up on other shows such as The Grand Tour, Clarkson's Farm and his hosting gig of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, there is another Jeremy Clarkson many viewers may not remember.

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Back before the days of Top Gear there was, well, another Top Gear.

It was the BBC's flagship car show for quite a long time before it was scrapped in 2001, leading Clarkson and Andy Wilman to revive it the following year with a revamped format, but before that Clarkson had been a presenter on the old Top Gear.

Old clips from the show can still be found and footage of Clarkson's first ever appearance really surprised viewers when it was screened during an episode of The Michael McIntyre Chat Show in 2014.

The comedian had been interviewing Clarkson when he showed footage of his first ever time on Top Gear, and the audience was in stitches both at the volume of his hair and the sound of his voice.

Clarkson described his own accent, which sounds something like Peter Serafinowicz's character Brian Butterfield, as 'incredible'.

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Another clip from three years later showed that he'd dropped the original accent, which really must be heard to be believed, for something much closer to the voice we know today but had in that time grown one hell of an afro.

One viewer admitted that 'it really baffles me how much his accent changed' and wondered if he'd either put on a received pronunciation accent or been told to ham it up for the cameras.

Another said the person in the clip 'cannot be young Jezza', while a third suggested that 'he sounds like James [May]' in his first appearance on Top Gear.

Quite a lot of people admitted that they basically couldn't picture Clarkson as a young man, while a few suggested that the younger Clarkson sounded like he was 'on helium'.