I just watched the clip in question. Clarkson mumbles the entire second line (as is not uncommon for this sort of thing - if you think about counting a dozen items, you might often only clearly utter the first and last few).
IMO, he muttered the offensive version, and it was stupid, but not deliberately provocative. Dumb mistake, not racist trolling.
I learned it as “catch a n-word by the toe” when I was a kid growing up in 1980s Ireland. I think it was Calvin & Hobbes that introduced me to the tiger version and by the time I was 8 or 9 or 10 I realised it was better than the original way I had learned it.
Terms like “n-word in the woodpile” were common in my childhood too.
OP, what’s with the mustard in the hed?
Accept our gratitude for taking Piers Morgan, if you will.
Really, my impression (Canada) is that it’s mildly offensive, like Jap or Krout. The most offensive part I think here is that the people that are ignorant enough to use it here probably are also ignorant of the difference between a Pakistani, and Indian, Sri Lankan, and even apply it to Iranians and middle eastern types due to the superficially similarity. The offensiveness comes in deliberately using a less than polite term. AFAIK it does not have the baggage and nowhere sinks to the level of “nigger” in terms of loaded nastiness or deliberate offensiveness.
I assume the situation is very different in Britain?
I remember (I think it was Sydney Olympics) one of the older commentators on Canadian TV was discussing the performances of Canadian athletes and in passing called one a “Chinaman”. After a commercial break he was back on grovelling his way into a retraction “…meant no offense or disrespect, I apologize for the totally inappropriate…” yada yada. I had no idea until then the term was not-fit-for-TV offensive, I had assumed it was simply mildly condescending and antiquated and so rarely heard.
I learned the ‘tiger’ version first, in the '60s.
Nowadays when I think of the rhyme, I can’t help thinking ‘Eenie, Manny, Moe, and Jack’… which would be more appropriate for a car show. 
In Saskatchewan circa 1980, I learned it as “tigger”, a la Winnie The Pooh. (And my mother pronounces tiger as “tagger”, which drives me nuts.)
The long version was:
Eeny meenie miney moe
Catch a tigger by the toe
If he hollers let him go
Eeny meenie miney moe
My mother and your mother were washing clothes
My mother punched your mother in the nose
What colour was her blood?
<person names a colour, like “blue”>
B-L-U-E spells “blue” and you are not IT.
I would say the word ‘paki’ is more offensive than ‘nigger’ in the UK.
It’s of course really hard to compare, because both terms attack different targets, but in my experience (which of course is limited), ‘Paki’ is a term hurled at people, violently, ‘Nigger’ is a term spoken about people (not that I’m suggesting its good, just used in generally different context)
I grew up in rural Minnesota in the 50’s, and I learned the catch a nigger version. But that changed after the civil Rights struggle of the early 1960’s – my younger brother learned it as catch an injun. That lasted until the in70’s and Wounded Knee. Then it changed to catch a Chinaman by the toe. Soon after that our small town got an exotic new restaurant, serving authentic chinese food – run by an immigrant from China. And a young cousin used that version to choose a dish from the selection he was offering – to the mortification of his parents.
Recently, I’ve heard the grandchildren & greatgrandhildren using catch a Martian by the toe. Given what NASA has learned about the lack of life on Mars, that’s probably a safe version. (Until the time we start colonizing Mars!)
We always caught a “knicker”, which makes even less sense, and let ‘him’ go when he “hollowed”. Those were the closest equivalents to the canonical versions which were words we actually knew the meaning of.
These days the kids catch either tigers or rabbits, but I was amused to note listening to my daughter today, they still “hollow”, same as always. Maybe those tigers are digging out pits in Minecraft or something…
I didn’t know there was an ‘n’ version. The one I learned was … catch a German by the toe. If he hollers, make him say, “I surrender USA.”
In the early 80s, in the UK, I learned the n-word version. I seem to remember that “Ip dip, dog shit” was a much more popular selection rhyme, though.
I wonder if this footage was leaked by someone in the TV industry, fed up with (in their view) Top Gear getting away with another borderline-racist remark. There was slope-gate only a few weeks ago, and the lazy Mexicans one before that. Maybe someone recalled that they had this eeny-meeny clip on tape somewhere, and decided it was time to get Clarkson. Because in isolation, it doesn’t seem that newsworthy to me. As mentioned already, it was probably just Clarkson’s ingrained childhood memory of the rhyme kicking in.
The ‘slope’ remark was worse, because that seemed quite deliberate, complete with knowing pause.
Interesting. I’m 37 and as a little kid lived in MA. I was probably 10 before I learned there was a non-tiger version of the rhyme.
I grew up in an all-white town and went to an all-white school in rural Alabama (70s-80s.) I remember both versions being common. I would probably say it was about 50-50. This is the one I remember.
*
Eeny, meeny, miny moe
Catch a (nigger/tiger) by the toe
If he hollers make him pay
Fifty dollars every day
My momma told me
To pick the best one
And that is you*
Hmm, I’d only heard “Catch a spider on the wall”. I guess children use lots of rhymes without bothering about their meaning/origin, e.g. ring a ring of roses, yellow yellow dirty fellow, baa baa black sheep.
I wonder what would happen to Enid Blyton were she around today?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has that thought. The other day I was thinking that if I start losing it too bad, euthanasia will be nice just so I save myself the indignity of losing my “I know better” filter.
Heh. I always thought “Enid” was a man, growing up with my Noddy books and Noddy toothpaste and Noddy dolls and stuff. Weird.
This american wouldn’t say paki* as a term for a pakistani at all, much less in a situation where someone who might be offended by it could hear it. But I think nigger has a far more universal antipathy than paki and I simply do not think there’s any excuse for an educated adult in full possession of their faculties to think it would have been appropriate to use that rhyme mumbled or no.
I find, more and more, apologies do very little for me. If they really cared, they’d take the time to do it right the first time around rather than run damage control after the fact.
I’m not entirely sure how old I was when I learned that rhyme, but somewhere in the 8-10 range would be about right for me. At any rate, we both seem to have learned the variation existed as children in the 80s, which is unusual for most of the US respondents here. I’m a little surprised at how many people didn’t know the variation existed until well into adulthood. That said, well, Chicago is a racially charged city. The child’s game “kill the man with the ball” was also known as “kill the nigger with the ball” or “smear the queer.” (The latter I know is known elsewhere. The former, I haven’t found much reference to except here.) I also have a clear memory, in seventh grade, when Harold Washington (the first African-American mayor of Chicago) died, one of my classmates said “Thank god that nigger is dead.” Twelve year old kid in 1987. Yep, my neighborhood, at least, was that kind of place.