Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is the bookies' hot favourite to be blown up at this year's Edenbridge Bonfire Party.

The annual event features a 30-foot high Guy Fawkes, plus a 'celebrity Guy'. The two self-destruct at the height of the event's firework display, which follows a torchlit procession through the small Kentish town of Edenbridge.

Disgraced professional cyclist Lance Armstrong was the exploding celebrity in 2012, adorned with a Jim'll Fix It badge. Last year newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins was the celebrity effigy.


The Lance Armstrong effigy blown up in 2012 at the Edenbridge Bonfire Party (©Edenbridge Bonfire Party)

At 4/1 odds, Clarkson is ahead of Alex Salmond and Kevin Pietersen, both on 6/1 odds of being incinerated at this year's party on Saturday November 8. Longer shots include politicians Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage at 10/1, though Farage is the people's choice in a reader poll at kentonline.co.uk.

Clarkson has earned the ire of cyclists several times this year, most notably with a section on Top Gear in which he recycled his tired old catchphrase “Work Harder. Get a car.” As usual, Clarkson spouted anti-cycling stereotypes in the kind of media attack on cycling that has been linked in Australia with greater hostility toward riders on the road.

Earlier this year, Clarkson tweeted a picture, apparently taken from the driver's seat of a car, of a cyclist he accused of being a "point-maker" for taking the lane to prevent him from over-taking. That cyclist was Singletrack reader Itsme, who said he had deliberately taken the lane after Clarkson had passed him too closely.

Clarkson hasn't just annoyed cyclists this year. He claims to have recently been hounded out of Argentina because was driving a car with a number plate locals interpreted as a reference to the Falklands Islands,. Earlier this year he was warned by the BBC to stay out of trouble after mumbling a highly offensive term for black people in unaired footage from Top Gear.

We suspect that if road.cc readers ran the event, Clarkson would be hot favourite every year.