January 15, 2014
Top Gear – Car hit by train – Safety Message
March 12, 2012
The hidden dangers of driving an antique BMW Isetta
January 20, 2012
The anti-Top Gear crowd: “In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime”
Patrick Hayes on the tut-tutting, disapproving folks who only watch Top Gear to generate more outrage at Jeremy Clarkson’s antics:
I wonder what proportion of the five million viewers of the Top Gear India Special over Christmas were desperate-to-be-offended members of the chattering classes? Skipping the second instalment of Great Expectations, they no doubt sat through the show solely to tweet about how awful Jeremy Clarkson and Co’s monkeying about on the road to the Indian Himalayas was.
In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime. He was chastised for offending blind people when he called former UK prime minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, censured for driving while sipping a gin and tonic en route to the North Pole, and generated fury when a couple of years ago he called for the Welsh language to be abolished. But never has he generated so much controversy as the Twitch-hunt that took place against him at the end of last year, after he made a quip that public sector strikers ‘should all be shot’.
This was so evidently a joke, although a crap one, that you had to wonder whether the tens of thousands of ‘offended’ people who took to their keyboards to campaign to get him sacked were for real. Is it humanly possible to be that po-faced? Evidently so. Irony-phobic Labour leader Ed Miliband led the way, calling the comments ‘absolutely disgraceful and disgusting’. A sour-mouthed trade union rep even compared his comments to the atrocities carried out by former Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi.
[. . .]
For these petty censors, it’s not enough simply to change the channel. The danger, so the argument goes, is that Clarkson could become a red-blooded role model to millions of impressionable viewers who will mimic his expressions and share his juvenile, PC-averse passions. Attempts to tame Jezza are invariably attempts to try to reform the viewing public, too. If not stopped now, it would seem, Top Gear could generate an army of misogynistic, environment-despoiling racists-in-the-making.
The danger doesn’t come from Clarkson, however. It comes from these Clarkson-bashing killjoys who are intolerant of informal banter, suspicious of anything ‘fun’, taking every word said in jest literally and moaning to the authorities because Clarkson sets a bad example. These are the ones who, to steal a phrase from the man himself, ‘should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite’.
January 12, 2012
This time it’s India that gets the Top Gear treatment
I haven’t seen the Top Gear special in question, but from the complaints, it sounds like a pretty typical outing for the boys:
In the letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, the HCI criticised a lack of cultural sensitivity and called on the BBC to take action to pacify those offended.
One Indian diplomat told the BBC News website: “People are very upset because you cannot run down a whole society, history, culture and sensitivities.
“India is a developing country, we have very many issues to address, all that is fine but it is not fine to broadcast this toilet humour.”
He added: “There are many parts of the programme that people have complained about.
“It’s not only Indians, it’s also our British friends — it goes much beyond.”
The diplomat cited an “offensive” banner placed on the side of a train — reading “the United Kingdom promotes British IT for your company” — which read quite differently when the carriages were parted.
And he also criticised a scene in the programme which showed Clarkson taking off his trousers at a party to demonstrate how to use a trouser press.
Showing off the customised Jaguar, complete with toilet roll on its aerial, presenter Jeremy Clarkson said on the programme: “This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.”
Update: Jeremy Clarkson strikes again, this time agitating the folks on the Isle of Sheppey and recent immigrants:
Clarkson wrote: “Mostly, the Isle of Sheppey is a caravan site.
“There are thousands of thousands of mobile homes, all of which I suspect belong to former London cabbies, the only people on Earth with the knowledge to get there before it’s time to turn round and come home again.”
“And what of the locals? Well, they tend to be the sort of people who arrived in England in the back of a refrigerated truck or clinging to the underside of a Eurostar train.”
“And that reinforces my point rather well.
“Mboto has somehow evaded the gunmen and the army recruiters in his remote Nigerian village. He walked north, avoiding death and disease, and then somehow made it right across the Sahara desert to Algeria.
“Here, he managed to overwhelm the security men with their AK-47s and get on a boat to Italy, where he sneaked past the guards.”
The article in Top Gear mag adds: “He made it all the way across Europe to Sangatte, from which he escaped one night and swam to Kent.
“But that stumped him. Getting out of there was impossible, so he decided to make a new life in Maidstone.”
December 2, 2011
Biggest general strike since 1926 becomes a “damp squib”
Some sense the evil hand of . . . Jeremy Clarkson?
It was to be the biggest strike in a generation. People were openly and unabashedly comparing Wednesday’s day of action over public sector pensions to the general strike of 1926. It was to bring Britain to a standstill. Mark a turning point in the battle against the cuts instigated by the spawns of the evil Iron Lady. Become a talking point that would strike fear into the cold heart of Cameron and pave the way to bigger, more decisive action.
Except, erm, the very next morning it had been almost completely forgotten. It barely registered as a blip on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Newspaper coverage was on the whole sympathetic, but slight. None of the predicted chaos came to pass. Prime minister Cameron could quite safely dismiss the strike as a ‘damp squib’ and provoke few comments except from the usual suspects. People shrugged and went back to work. Far from being a Great Event like the 1926 strike that people would draw inspiration from in 85 years time, it was barely discussed. As my colleague Brendan O’Neill had anticipated, it all felt more like a ‘loud and colourful PR stunt ultimately designed to disguise the fact that, in truth, trade unions are a sad shadow of their former selves’.
Just as the PR flames were beginning to dim, however, enter Jeremy Clarkson, the cartoonish presenter of Top Gear, who sped to the rescue with a particularly naff joke about the strikers being shot in front of their families. Of course, he didn’t actually mean it. In the context of the programme, BBC1’s The One Show, his remarks were actually more a dig at the BBC: he had in fact been praising the strikers (‘London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about… it’s also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow.) but then said, as it was the Beeb, he had to provide ‘balance’, making his now notorious quip: ‘Frankly, I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?’
Update: James Delingpole said he’s been flooded with interview requests since the strike began, largely because of the public’s reaction to the strike:
I got my answer from a chance remark made by Jeremy Vine after our interview. He was telling me about the phone-in he’d done the day before during the public sector workers’ strike and what had astonished him was the mood of the callers. If I remember what he said correctly, one of his studio guests was a nurse on a £40,000 PA salary, with a guaranteed £30,000 pension, and this had not gone down well with the mother-of-three from Northern Ireland struggling as a finance officer in the private sector on a salary of £14,000 and no pension to speak of. The callers were very much on the side of the private sector. In fact, they were on the whole absolutely apoplectic that privileged, relatively overpaid public sector workers with their gold-plated pensions should have the gall to go out on strike when the people who pay their salaries – private sector workers – have to go on slogging their guts out regardless.
[. . .]
After all, as Fraser Nelson reports, the strike itself was a massive flop. Only a minority of union members voted it for it; the turn-out was so poor that the unions felt compelled to send out hectoring letters accusing their membership of being “scabs”; the hospitals – and many schools – stayed open, Heathrow’s immigration queues actually got shorter. This was not the glorious day of action (or inaction) that the militants had hoped for. Nor did it fit into the BBC’s ongoing narrative that Osborne’s vicious cuts (what cuts, we ask) are causing such hardship and misery among the saintly frontline public sector workers who bravely rescue our cats from trees and smilingly change our bed pans that really a Labour government run by Ed Balls is the only option.
Not only were the strikes a failure in numbers terms, though, but more damagingly they were a failure in propaganda terms. As both Fraser Nelson and Jeremy Vine have noted, there really has been a shift in public mood. I remember not more than a year ago going on Vine’s show to state, somewhat provocatively that I’d rather toss my children out on the street than have them sponging off the taxpayer in the public sector, and of course the mainly left-leaning BBC audience went apoplectic. I think if I’d gone on and said the same thing today they would probably have been demanding a statue erected in my honour in Parliament Square.
December 1, 2011
October 13, 2011
BBC’s Top Gear GPS deal violates BBC’s own rules
Due to editorial rules, a Top Gear-branded GPS using Jeremy Clarkson’s voice will be withdrawn:
The BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, will now will now donate all proceeds from the sales to Children In Need to bypass rules that prevent the show’s presenters endorsing motoring products.
The Top Gear satnav features Clarkson giving instructions in typically sardonic style — amusing for Top Gear fans, no doubt, but it may begin to grate on the 100th journey.
“Keep left — if you’re not sure which side left is you really shouldn’t be on the road,” he tells drivers.
“After 700 yards, assuming this car can make it that far, you have reached your destination, with the aid of 32 satellites and me — well done.”
The corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, said no more of the Top Gear satnavs, made by TomTom, would be produced.
A plan to allow existing TomTom owners to download Clarkson’s voice to update their models has now been dropped.
Given how many people have complained about the default voices provided with their GPS units, I can see why adding Jeremy Clarkson’s dulcet tones to the mix could hardly have made the situation any worse.
October 9, 2011
Top Gear: Jeremy Clarkson’s tribute to the E-type Jaguar
April 5, 2011
Top Gear‘s Mexican jokes ruled not in breach of broadcasting regulations
In a surprisingly robust defence of free speech, Ofcom (the British broadcasting regulator) will not apply sanctions against BBC’s popular motoring show Top Gear for their anti-Mexican jokes during a review of the Mastretta MXT:
The watchdog noted that Top Gear is “well-known for its irreverent style and sometimes outspoken humour” and that it “frequently uses national stereotypes as a comedic trope and that there were few, if any, nationalities that had not at some point been the subject of the presenters’ mockery”.
Given the audience’s likely familiarity with the presenters’ “mocking, playground-style humour”, Ofcom suggested the majority of viewers “would therefore be likely to have understood that the comments were being made for comic effect”.
The ruling concludes: “Ofcom is not an arbiter of good taste, but rather it must judge whether a broadcaster has applied generally accepted standards by ensuring that members of the public were given adequate protection from offensive material. Humour can frequently cause offence. However, Ofcom considers that to restrict humour only to material which does not cause offence would be an unnecessary restriction of freedom of expression.”
The jokes and the Mexican government’s response were discussed in February.
February 7, 2011
James May’s U-2 ride
Not at all Top Gear-ish.
H/T to Jon for the link.
February 4, 2011
As expected, BBC offers apology for Top Gear anti-Mexican remarks
It still won’t change anything:
The BBC has now obliged, with a statement which concedes that while the remarks were “rude” and “mischievous”, there was “no vindictiveness” behind them.
The Corporation continues: “Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised.”
It adds that “stereotype-based comedy was allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience knew they could expect it, as was the case with Top Gear“.
The apology concludes: “Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show’s intention.”
Indeed, said executive producer apologised personally to señor Medina-Mora Icaza, and we look forward to seeing that meeting on Top Gear in due course, complete with witty commentary from Clarkson, Hammond and May.
February 2, 2011
BBC’s Top Gear team spark hostile response from Mexico
I guess that diplomats must do things like this, but anyone who’s watched more than five minutes of Top Gear would not take them seriously as political commentators. Hilariously funny, yes, but not particularly representative of British or British government views. Mexico, however, has chosen to take offense and has sent a demand to the BBC for a formal apology:
The irreverent British motoring show “Top Gear” has driven into diplomatic hot water after a host branded a Mexican car “lazy, feckless and flatulent” and said it mirrored Mexico’s national characteristics.
Mexico’s ambassador to Britain fired off a letter to the state broadcaster protesting the show’s “outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults” and demanding an apology.
In the episode, host Richard Hammond likened a Mexican sports car to “a lazy, feckless and flatulent oaf with a mustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.”
Co-host James May went on to describe Mexican food as “like sick with cheese on it,” or “refried sick,” while Jeremy Clarkson predicted they would not get any complaints about the show because “the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control, snoring.”
I’m sure the BBC will provide the requested apology, but I doubt that it will change anything. Top Gear without the over-the-top commentary would be just another bloody car show.
September 1, 2010
“The Stig” to be unmasked
As I mentioned a while back, the BBC went to court to try to prevent a book publisher from revealing the identity of Top Gear‘s mysterious race car driver “The Stig”. The court has ruled against the BBC. James May, one of the presenters on the show, had this to say:
“Obviously I’m now going to have to take some legal action of my own, because I have been the Stig for the past seven years, and I don’t know who this bloke is, who’s mincing around in the High Court pretending it’s him.”
August 23, 2010
Unmasking “The Stig”
A court case will decide whether HarperCollins can publish a book that reveals the identity of Top Gear‘s anonymous driver:
Publisher HarperCollins is in a legal dispute with the BBC over a book that reveals the identity of Top Gear‘s The Stig, BBC News understands.
Both sides appeared in London’s High Court on Monday after the BBC confirmed it was trying to halt its publication.
The Stig regularly takes to the track on the BBC Two show, but never removes his helmet on screen.
The BBC says the publication of the book breaches contractual and confidentiality obligations.
HarperCollins declined to give any official comment.
The dispute comes amid suggestions from several newspapers speculating that the character’s true identity is former Formula Three driver Ben Collins, based on the financial reports of his company.
August 27, 2009
Kids will be kids
Even when they’re adults . . . James May tried to set a record, but the kids just got in the way:
An attempt by Top Gear‘s James May to break the world’s longest model railway record has failed amid claims that vandals and thieves tampered with the track.
The long-haired presenter joined 400 enthusiasts to build the miniature railway stretching 10 miles from Barnstaple to Bideford, in North Devon.
He was recording the attempt yesterday for his new show James May’s Toy Stories.
The team hoped that a train would run successfully along the length of the track, built on the picturesque Tarka Trail.
But their hard work was hampered as parts of the track were taken and coins dropped on the line, blowing the battery. Even the battery was stolen.
H/T to Jeff Shultz.
