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Jeremy Clarkson picked up an award for special recognition at the national television awards earlier this week – and you have voted for the big man’s greatest quip.

Auto Trader readers voted in their hundreds for Clarkson’s jibe on the biggest gas guzzlers:

“Now the best gas guzzler of the year – The Range Rover Sport which achieved 8mpg, the Bugatti Veyron which achieved 4mpg, and Hemel Hempstead. That actually used up 60 million gallons of fuel and didn't move an inch.”

The quote received 28 per cent of the votes, beating other Clarkson classics such as: “You cannot be a true petrolhead until you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo – it’s like having really great sex which leaves you with an embarrassing itch.”

The second highest quote was Jeremy’s unique view on supercars: “They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert.”

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May won the Best Factual programme earlier this week at the National Television Awards – with Jeremy picking up the special recognition award.

And F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton was on hand to award the motoring megamouth with his prize.

And true to form, Clarkson churned out another one-liner, telling Lewis that “Alonso’s eye brows are too big.”

Top Gear is in its tenth series and is a BBC hit.

The results of the poll are:

1. Now the best gas guzzler of the year – The Range Rover Sport which achieved 8mpg, the Bugatti Veyron which achieved 4mpg, and Hemel Hempstead. That actually used up 60 million gallons of fuel and didn't move an inch – 28 per cent.

2. Supercars are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert – 16 per cent

3. In a list of the five most rubbish things in the world, I’d have America’s foreign policy at five. Aids at four. Iran’s nuclear programme at three. Gordon Brown at two and Maserati’s gearbox at number one. It is that bad – 13 per cent.

4. And if you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning and think you are an onion, here’s your car. (On the BMW X3) – 11 per cent.

5. Sure it’s quiet – for a diesel. But that’s like being well-behaved... for a murderer – 10 per cent.

6. You cannot be a true petrolhead until you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo – it’s like having really great sex which leaves you with an embarrassing itch – 9 per cent.

7. I don’t often agree with the RSPCA as I believe it is an animal’s duty to be on my plate at supper time – 8 per cent.

8. Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hardcore adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You just end up with a half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face – 7 per cent.

9. The new Rolls Royce looks like it might kick your head in... for fun. Especially in black. In a pale colour or silver, it looks like Vinnie Jones in one of Graham Norton’s T-shirts – 3 per cent.

10. We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an EM Forster novel – 1 per cent.

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