After a year-long hiatus the title of motoring writer of the year has returned to its rightful owner. Jeremy Clarkson accepted the award last week at the British Press Awards in London.

Known variously to his readers as Clarko, Jezza or plain Jeremy, Clarkson was recognised for the wit and versatility of his writing and his ability to cut through the smoke and mirrors surrounding a new car launch. The judges were fulsome in their praise of his weekly reviews in Driving: “He’s streets ahead” and “He always seems to have another gear” were among their comments.

He accepted the award with characteristic restraint and with a few carefully chosen words directed at Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor with whom he was caught up in a scuffle at the ceremony last year.

Clarkson, 44, passed his driving test in his grandfather’s R-type Bentley. After being expelled from school for drinking and smoking he started as a journalist on the Rotherham Advertiser. After three years of training interspersed with block release courses at a college in Sheffield he initially jettisoned journalism to become a teddy bear salesman. “I’d drive all the way to Cwmbran or Pontefract where the usually horrid proprietor of a gift shop would listen to my spiel and then say ‘no thanks’ and I’d drive back to London,” he recalled recently.

During the 1980s he wrote for specialist car magazines such as Performance Car before appearing on Top Gear for the BBC. He won motoring writer of the year for his Sunday Times reviews in 2003. Acknowledged throughout the motoring world for his no-holds-barred reviews his name has even become a verb. To be Clarksoned is to be the proud owner of a new car that Jeremy subsequently trashes.