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Top Gear – Clarks-on or Clarks-off?

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For a TV show about cars, the BBC’s Top Gear has managed to get an awful lot of people hot under the bonnet.

Even those who don’t know their RS from their E-Type.

Some say he has more lives than cat, and will stroll back on to our screens with a stupid grin before we can say “Power!” very loudly whilst wearing a leather jacket. Others that he is a preposterous, out-of-date buffoon, who has no place on modern TV. All we know is - he’s called Jeremy.

Jeremy Clarkson is, in case you haven’t been out from under your rock for a while, star host of Top Gear, a show ostensibly about cars, but in reality a three-way male menopause featuring “Jezza” and his two mates crashing things, blowing up stuff, being cheeky and driving some very costly cars like they’ve stolen them. Ironically, they wouldn’t need to do that as the show has made all of them (and the BBC) very, very, rich.

Whilst the laddish behaviour and fooling about prods the annoyance button for many, the programme has points in it’s favour too: It doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s presenters lampoon their own dinosaur-tendencies, plus it makes 350 million viewers across the globe enormously happy.

Following several increasingly high-profile and hysterically-reported incidents of Clarkson using outdated, racially-insensitive phrases or stereotypes (plus the allegations about an Argentinean-annoying number plate), the show’s biggest star has been on – by his own admission – his final warning.

When the news broke that he’d been in a ‘fracas’ with a producer and suspended by the BBC, apparently over a lack of catering, the pro and anti-Jeremy groups swung into action.

Heading for a million people have already signed an online petition calling for his reinstatement, and even the Prime Minister has expressed his disappointment that the show has been taken off the air, whilst carefully avoiding condoning the actions of it’s star.

Meanwhile, those that view a show about gas-guzzling, ridiculously expensive cars, presented by three outspoken aging idiots, as an affront have welcomed the opportunity to reiterate why the show should be killed off forthwith for being racist, and setting a bad example.

For fans, it’s immediate removal from air, and subsequent cancellation of the rest of the series, has seemed particularly unfair. Why should they be penalised and denied their Top Gear fix because Clarkson has done something silly... again?

And they voted with their feet last Sunday – Top Gear’s usual slot was filled with a show about the Red Arrows, and viewing figures crashed by 4 million.

I own a small, economical car, try and drive carefully and considerately, and believe that if Clarkson has done something wrong he should be suitably and proportionately punished. I’m also a fan of Top Gear, one of the funniest supposedly-factual shows on TV, which feels a lot like being at the pub with your mates.

I suspect Top Gear may just have got stuck in neutral forever. And on that bombshell...

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 20th of March 2015, where it's title lost the show's name, and my second to last paragraph about why I like the show received a trim that basically left it just saying I'm a fan. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here, although it has yet again gone straight into their column archive section uncredited.

As mentioned last week, I was wary of commenting on what is still very much a live story, as I have to submit my ramblings two days before they get published, meaning it could be entirely out of date by the time it gets into print (or the paper decide not to bother).

Although there were developments, nothing major had changed by the time it went to press, although I suspect I just got lucky this time. Amongst the developments since I subbed this on Wednesday are:

  • Apparently James May and Richard Hammond were offered the chance to continue Top Gear without JC, but declined
  • Clarkson said at a charity event that he was effectively sacked by the BBC
  • The petition supporting his reinstatement reached a million signatures
  • Someone dressed (poorly) as The Stig drove a tank to he BBC's London HQ to deliver the petition
It seems increasingly unlikely that we'll see Top Gear again in it's familiar format. What are the options?

  1. The show continues with just May and Hammond - good, but it would be noticeably lacking Clarkson's presence
  2. May and Hammond continue but with a new co-presenter - better, but who would want that job? They would be have to be very thick-skinned to deal with the criticism from fans and the media
  3. Top Gear in the same format, but with new presenters - Ooo. Watch it lose millions of viewers.
  4. Top Gear MkII - New presenters, new format - Ditto.
Any of these -  or anything else, for that matter - would be a poor substitute for a hugely entertaining show. Yes, I know a lot of it is scripted and sometimes it shows. Yes, I'm aware that it's not particularly about cars.

It's bloody entertaining though...

(Another slow-running cassette, from June 2000 this time, containing a compilation album called "Top Of The Pops 2". Incidentally, where's that TV show gone? Or have they used up all the clips available that don't contain an off-limits presenter?)

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