In the days when I used occasionally to weekend near Chipping Norton — a regular highlight being the Sunday joint bought from R. Sole’s butcher’s shop — the area was notoriously insalubrious. The taxi we summoned to pick us up at Kingham station often smelt strongly of disinfectant; if not strongly then also of the vomit to which it had been insufficiently applied in an effort at concealment.

A ‘Chipping Norton set’ — had one heard the phrase, which one had not — might perhaps have suggested pretty crockery in use at Mabel’s high street teashop, or a fetching hair-do available in the salon next door.

Now we learn of a set of an entirely different sort. Peter Oborne — writing in the Daily Telegraph in expressions of affected outrage that might have been lifted from the dear old News of the Screws in its hypocritical heyday — tells us of “an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency”.

Who they? Well, according to Oborne they include David and Samantha Cameron, their friends Rebekah Brooks (who these days is no more in need than they of further introduction) and her former racing trainer husband Charlie Brooks, and “PR fixer Matthew Freud, married to [Rupert] Murdoch’s daughter Elizabeth”.

The name of Jeremy Clarkson was not actually mentioned by Oborne, but this most well-known of Chippy residents was quickly added to the list by others — not least because he is a pal of all of the foregoing.

This week, in his column in the Sunday Times, Clarkson also counted himself in, while working hard, paradoxically, to deny the very existence of the group — at any rate with the membership and collective aims alleged elsewhere.

Laughably, he claimed that the Freuds weren’t part of the set because they live in Burford “which to most people in Chipping Norton — myself included — is basically France”.

To some people perhaps, Jeremy — a few residents of the town remain obstinately and comically insular — but not to you who could cover the measly 11 miles between the towns in — what? — five minutes in one of the high-powered cars you so enjoy driving.

You would be there even more quickly if you started from what you style — so evidently is it your local — “the pub”. This is a reference to the Kingham Plough, an excellent Michelin-rated establishment run by Emily and Miles Lampson.

In seeking to challenge the myth of the set’s machinations, Clarkson offered in his article what he hoped we would recognise as a tongue-in-cheek account of the infamous Christmas party at the Brookses that was attended by, among others, himself, the Camerons, and James Murdoch.

He wrote: “We began with a cocktail made from crushed socialists and after we’d discussed how the trade union movement could be smashed and how News Corp should be allowed to take control of the BBC, Rupert Murdoch joined us on a live video feed from his private volcano, stroking a white cat.”

Curiously — and discounting a little of it as being a slight exaggeration (that volcano!) — this all bears a surprising similarity to the description given to me a few years ago by a friend who had himself endured a dinner with the Chipping Norton set. Clarkson, Rebekah Wade and her then husband, EastEnders’ Ross Kemp, had all been present and correct (if far from politically so).

But this is not intended as an attack on Clarkson. Our politics are our own affair, as are the choices we make over whom we call our friends. Like David Cameron — who still displays a warm, if politically inexpedient attachment to Andy Coulson — Clarkson is not junking Mrs Brooks because she appears to be in big trouble.

He wrote on Sunday: “I feel desperately sad that Rebekah has had to resign but the cloud does have a silver lining — I can see more of her. She has been a friend for a long time. She is now. And she always will be.” That Clarkson is probably, on the whole, a good thing, I judge from the various pictures of him that can be found in our Newspaper House archive. Some of them are on this page.

In many of the selection he is involved in charity work of some kind or another. And, yes, while I realise that ‘charidee’ is an important activity for anyone eager to establish his or her celebrity credentials, it seems clear that Jeremy is considerably more generous of his time than is strictly necessary to achieve these.

In one picture, he shares the spotlight with Sister Frances Dominica, the founder of two children’s hospices. Is she of the Chipping Norton set? Surely not — though she has appeared on Desert Island Discs whose presenter, Kirsty Young, is another famous West Oxfordshire resident . . .