While ideally one should not approach typing with a given type in mind, we confess that we were nevertheless coming to Jeremy Clarkson with the expectation that he would be ESTP. After all, that is the obvious type for a person who does what he does, right?

It may well be said that on the ‘Top Gear’ show Clarkson tends to act as an ESTP. But watching the interviews that he has done outside of ‘Top Gear’, Clarkson instead seems to be very self-deprecating and self-ironic. In particular, there is one interview where he says that nobody really likes him and that he is growing so old that he is now a few years from the stage where he will be wetting himself on screen if they keep him on the show. If we go by the Jungian functions, what Clarkson is doing here goes against the grain of Se (which is the dominant function of an ESTP).

Where Se frequently drives its users to competitively jockey for position with the immediate situation as the pivot of their cognition, Ne (which is the dominant function of an ENTP) works differently. For while ENTPs can also jockey for position, their jockeying will often be indirect, whereas the ESTP is direct.

As a general rule, then, Ne is stimulated by the abstract properties of an object and by surprising connections between objects and concepts that are seemingly unrelated. Thus, ENTPs tend to revel more in facetious remarks and the use of smoke and mirrors than the ESTPs who are indeed known for their directness.

So in conclusion, ENTPs tend to employ misdirection, self-deprecation and self-irony, in just the way Clarkson does, trusting that people – or at least the right people – will be able to recognize the ‘smartness’ of the ENTP through the misdirection.