Aididan
Published 13 Aug 2023Top Gear is one of the most bizarre shows to ever exist. Not because of the quality of the show or anything, but rather because of how it evolved over the course of its existence. What exactly is it about Top Gear that makes it so special? Well, watch the video and find out.
Or don’t, I’m not your mother.
December 14, 2023
What Top Gear Really Meant
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December 12, 2023
Rolling a Reliant Robin | Top Gear | BBC
Top Gear
Published 26 Nov 2010Jeremy takes the extreme sport of Reliant Robin rolling to the streets of Barnsley, aided by a string of celebrities who just happen to be on hand to help keep the fabled three-wheeler upright.
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January 23, 2023
Jeremy Clarkson and “the swamp of arrogant prejudice and self-gratification which sits at the bottom of the brain”
Nicholas Harris recounts the story of Jeremy Clarkson’s steady rise and sudden recent fall after a crude reference to someone or other in a newspaper article:
Screencap from Jeremy Clarkson’s banned Hawkstone Lager ad
“Ask Clarkson. Clarkson knows — people like fast cars, they like females with big boobies, and they don’t want the Euro, and that’s all there is to it.” This surmise, from Peep Show, captures the essence of Jeremy Clarkson’s Noughties appeal — approvingly for those who liked him, and scandalously for those who didn’t. The spawn and spokesman of the English male id. Insular, impudent and straightforward in taste. And if that weren’t enough, he was also into cigs, engines and the Second World War.
For the minority of a more severe, moralistic, and joyless disposition, this made him a national-psychological defect to be suppressed, or ideally exposed and exorcised. Before Piers Morgan, Nigel Farage or Donald Trump provided such stern competition, it was a small badge of honour on the Left to publicly hate Clarkson. But for many of us (probably a majority at his peak) he was a vulgar treat to indulge. For the length of a Sunday column or an episode of Top Gear, we could wallow harmlessly in the swamp of arrogant prejudice and self-gratification which sits at the bottom of the brain. At a time of minimal collective loyalty, the nation could reliably divide into those two tribes. Clarkson the monster, or Clarkson the geezer. Wokery vs blokery. A version of the same split is fuelling the current Clarkson row, but with the weight of opinion reversed.
[…]
But his spiritual and popular appointment to the English is a far tougher thing to dismiss. He is, like it or not, quite a lot of us writ ludicrously, satirically large. Like a 21st-century John Bull: to paraphrase Auden, a self-confident, swaggering bully of meaty neck and clumsy jest. Whatever Clarkson’s professional fate, the question of whether our society can tolerate him has implications for the stomach and sensibility of the national character, of which he is a significant avatar and champion. And his rise and fall reads as a history of a changing English firmament, one in which public morality has come to supersede mere entertainment.
Plenty of time and work went into the germination of such a figure. Clarkson’s early life is a whistle-stop tour of the English class system. He was born rural, lower-middle class, Yorkshire. But, in a wonderful twist of fate, the Clarkson family came into money after his parents won the exclusive rights to sell Paddington Bear dolls, based on the ones they had made for him and his sister. With aspirational intent, Clarkson was sent to Repton, one of the North’s oldest private schools. There, he smoked, pranked and failed his way to expulsion, developing the likeable loutishness which is his career mainstay. And then he jumped social tracks again, entering the lowest rungs of the Fourth Estate at the Rotherham Advertiser.
A public schoolboy who can still boast that he crashed out of education with a C and two Us at A Level. The ingredients were in place for a broad, classless appeal. But Clarkson really came of professional age in the new meritocracy of Thatcher and Murdoch, a place where common touch came to supersede common background (something also exploited by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage). It was an England of quick, coarse wit, and quicker, coarser money; of the triumphant red-top, and the unrepentant “lad”. It suited Clarkson perfectly. Flush with entrepreneurial spirit, in Eighties London he had the wheeze of syndicating car news and reviews from his own company to the regional press. It was a money-maker which introduced him to motoring journalism and eventually to the producers of Top Gear.
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January 30, 2021
Toyota’s Invincible Truck
Big Car
Published 1 Nov 2020Toyota’s best-selling vehicle is the long-running Toyota Corolla, but second is Toyota’s resilient pickup the Hilux that’s been sold for over 50 years. No matter where you are in the world, you’ll likely find one moving up to a ton of cargo down a dusty lane. In the process it’s turned into a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde vehicle. On the one hand it’s the basic indestructible commercial vehicle that thousands of businesses rely on every day. On the other it’s become a well-specced weekend leisure vehicle. And in some cases it’s a bit of both! So why did this unassuming vehicle get a place of honour at the Top Gear studio, and what other successful vehicles have been born out of this long-running pickup?
If you’d like to support what I do, and get early access to advert-free videos and exclusive channel updates, please consider supporting the channel from just $1 or 80p a month: http://patreon.com/bigcar
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June 21, 2019
Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld UK Special
Matthew Lowry
Published on 19 Nov 2016This is the last episode of Motorworld (BBC WORLDWIDE), the extremely rare UK Special. All copyrights go to their respective owners.
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December 15, 2018
Season 3 of The Grand Tour to be the final one
The TV trio of James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson are giving up the show after the third season, due to begin in January, and will instead move on to “Hollywood budget” specials on Amazon Prime:
An emotional Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he will walk away from the studio car shows that helped turn him into a household name following the third series of The Grand Tour.
The outspoken presenter, 58, will give up on the traditional format employed by the hugely popular Amazon show and long-running BBC flagship Top Gear after more than 17 years.
However, fans needn’t be alarmed since Clarkson – joined by co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May – has inked a new deal with Amazon Prime for a fourth series of the show in a brand new format.
[…]
‘It’s a really sad day,’ Clarkson later told The Sun. ‘I will miss the banter with each other and with the audience. But we’ve been doing that show for effectively 17 years — sitting around in studios, watching cars race around the track.’
He added: ‘We all agreed that we’ve been doing it a long time and everything eventually runs its course. Besides, I’m 58 and I’m too fat to be climbing on to the stage.’
Clarkson, Hammond and May will now focus on a series of extravagant, big-budget specials over the next two years that will take them away from their usual studio environment.
I’m far from a petrol-head, but I’ve been a fan of Clarkson/Hammond/May for several years, and I still barely know anything about cars…
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July 23, 2018
Jeremy Clarkson is a maniac
Ove Bakken
Published on 19 Oct 2017
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May 15, 2018
James May is scared of heights! | Extras | James May’s Q&A (Ep 29) | Head Squeeze
BBC Earth Lab
Published on 12 Jul 2013James shares his thoughts on why some people are afraid and reveals that despite his fear of heights James has actually been as high as 73,000 feet in a U2 spy plane.
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January 23, 2018
Top Gear – lost in translation
Jean Girard
Published on 26 Feb 2009James May and Jeremy Clarkson discover the perils of a literal translation.
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January 15, 2018
Top Gear Discusses Emergency Sirens
Jacob Epstein
Published on 12 Jun 2014Series 18, Episode 7
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December 19, 2017
James May and Jeremy Clarkson on cycle safety – Top Gear: Series 21 Episode 5 – BBC Two
BBC
Published on 19 Mar 2014http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear Jeremy Clarkson and James May cycle around the streets of London after shooting a public information film to promote safer cycling.
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December 10, 2017
Top Gear – penis length
eduard toma
Published on 18 Sep 2009Top Gear blokes talk about cars but as usual, they are deviated to other things
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November 27, 2017
Top Gear Facts Of Handbrake Turns
Dave Lee
Published on 20 Jan 2014Sorry for the bad quality. Season 19 Episode 4
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October 29, 2017
Renault 4’s history: reviewed by James May on Top Gear
R4OfficialChannel
Published on 27 Dec 2015
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October 1, 2017
The Grand Tour Cast on Amazon vs the BBC, cars, and being recognized in Syria
British GQ
Published on 19 Sep 2017Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond discuss how they feel waking up as cultural icons, where they have (and haven’t) been spotted across the world and what to expect from The Grand Tour season 2. The Grand Tour are GQ’s TV Personalities of the year at the 2017 Men of the Year awards.
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