Jeremy Clarkson was suicidal at school after being bullied

London - Jeremy Clarkson was a "suicidal wreck" after being severely bullied at boarding school.

The former Top Gear host attended the £9 000-a-term Repton School in Derbyshire - one of the UK's most famous educational institutions - but revealed that life at the school was "terrible" after he was singled out for constant attacks from the older boys who made him lick toilet bowls and would regularly beat him in the middle of the night.

He said: "As the years dragged by I suffered many terrible things.

"I was thrown on an hourly basis into the ice plunge pool, dragged from my bed in the middle of the night and beaten, made to lick the lavatories clean and all the usual humiliations that public school used back then to turn a small boy into a gibbering, sobbing, suicidal wreck.

In the first two years the older boys broke pretty much everything I owned.

"They glued my records together, snapped my compass, ate my biscuits, defecated in my tuck box and they cut my trousers in half with a pair of garden shears."

Jeremy attended in the 70s and got nine o-levels but was expelled before taking his A-levels for being caught drinking and smoking at local pubs.

The school - founded in 1557 - cites writers Roald Dahl and Christopher Isherwood and the athlete Harold Abrahams amongst its alumni.

Meanwhile, the 55-year-old presenter - who was recently replaced on the BBC motoring show by BBC Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans - admitted in his column for The Sun newspaper that he will be emotional watching his final ever episode of the show when it airs this weekend but insisted he has similar projects in the pipeline.

He penned: "I'll miss the BBC, I really will. Because for every silly idiot, there were ten good guys who are mad and wonderful and good at what they do. But I won't miss making a car show."