The Top Gear Story (13 page)

Quite how the whole sequence was supposed to appease the white van men who took exception to
Top Gear
’s repeatedly
derogatory remarks is unclear. At least on occasion they have ‘celebrated’ the white van such as the time when they tried to lap the Nürburgring racetrack in a stripped-down model in under 10 minutes to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Transit.

Then there’s the lorry drivers: during one feature in the opening episode of Series 12, Clarkson commented that being a truck driver was a really hard job: ‘You’ve got to change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror … murder a prostitute. Change gear, change gear, murder … that’s a lot of effort in a day!’ Given only two years earlier, five prostitutes had been murdered in Ipswich, the comment was bound to cause trouble. The BBC said it was merely a ‘comic rebuttal’ of a common misconception about lorry drivers and even Eddie Stobart, the name behind the nation’s most famous haulage firm, said it needed to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Clarkson played it down again, saying people shouldn’t worry about what a ‘balding and irrelevant middle-aged man might have said.’ Poking fun at his detractors, on the very next
Top Gear
he said he had an apology to make about something that had been in all the papers, only to proceed to say sorry for forgetting to put the 911’s lap time on the board the previous week! Later, broadcasting watchdog Ofcom said they would not launch an investigation despite over 500 complaints.

And it’s not just lorry drivers who take offence at the show’s choice of words. The phrase ‘politically incorrect’ was virtually invented for
Top Gear
. As already noted, it’s a fact that Clarkson and Co. have riled numerous ‘foreign guests’ with their comments about Polish SatNavs, dog-eating car executives and illegal immigrants but there’s always more work/offending to be done. In a summer 2009 episode, the presenters were testing saloon cars and summed up which model would suit which type of person. Obviously such broad-brush strokes used to describe
a car are bound to generalise but for some viewers, their comments went a step too far. While pointing out that one particular saloon was for businessmen, they also placed a pie and a key on the bonnet of an Audi. Back in the studio, James May then denigrated Richard Hammond as a ‘steak and kidney pie lock unlocker’ and then Clarkson waded in, suggesting the car was more suitable for those whose business was selling pegs and heather. (Incidentally, over the years they had used the word before, calling a hammer ‘the tool of a pikey’ and have variously used the term to insult each other.)

Several viewers complained but the media’s reaction was even more terse. Jodie Matthews of the
Guardian
was not impressed and eloquently explained why: ‘A typical example of the blokey, exclusive, bullying humour that has made the show so popular? … Isn’t this a good thing? The answer to these questions is a firm no. This old-fashioned racism is not funny and has serious political effects. Its apparent acceptability is a damning indictment of how slowly we as a culture are moving in terms of changing attitudes towards Gypsies and travellers.’ She goes on to lambast the in-joke as a snide way of sidestepping the censors and suggests such verbiage is directly linked to ‘a strategy of racist discourse since at least the 19th century. It was effectively employed by George Smith of Coalville in his anti-Gypsy campaigns of the 1870s, and even by those who sought to romanticise Gypsies in the late 1800s,’ therefore ‘reinforcing ethnic and cultural stereotypes.’

For Matthews,
Top Gear
choosing to make remarks such as these is ‘unoriginal and boring; we have heard it all before, for centuries.’ Similar criticism followed what some viewers saw as the inappropriate use of the word ‘gay’ or other comments that risk offending the gay community such as use of the rhyming slang ‘ginger beer’ or remarks about being ‘bummed’.

Not all of Clarkson’s enemies or critics are campaigners, though. One of his most high-profile spats was with Piers Morgan, the acid-tongued former
Sun
columnist, who dominated much of Fleet Street as the
Mirror
’s editor before a faked military photo scandal cost him his job. Thereafter, he turned his hand to becoming one of the world’s most famous TV personalities on shows such as
America’s Got Talent
as well as his own chat shows.

Jeremy Clarkson was one of three people that Morgan says he has had a long-standing dislike for (the other two being David Yelland and Ian Hislop). So, why was there such acrimony between the two? Well, Morgan had published pictures of Clarkson with his female producer in a car. Clarkson was livid and, as a happily married man, incensed by the invasion into his privacy and the implied insinuation. The resentment festered for three years and then at a Press Awards ceremony in 2004, Clarkson actually hit Morgan. Thereafter the former Fleet Street man suggested to
The Times
that Clarkson believed that because ‘he’s a
Sun
and
Sunday Times
journalist, therefore he’s immune to the normal coverage of a TV star who might give fancy interviews about his solid marriage.’ He went on to say, ‘I actually didn’t care that much about the Clarkson stuff until he began behaving ridiculously, smacking me round the head. He’s perfectly entitled to smack me around the head, but the idea that smacking editors will help your PR is rather short-sighted.’

Of course, not all criticism of
Top Gear
is aimed at their outspoken views or mad stunts. Sometimes it’s just direct slating of the show itself. One such regular criticism focuses on an alleged repetition/overuse of sequences: for example, the frequency of military hardware. In the last show of Series 1,
Top Gear
ran a feature that saw a TVR versus a Harrier jump jet; back in the 1960s the Harrier was first tested at Dunsfold airfield, no less. But we have also famously seen Clarkson avoid the bullets
of the Irish Guards in an SLK55 AMG. This latter scene was at the Eastmere ‘village’, a replica of a German hamlet that had originally been built post-war to allow Cold War British soldiers to practise fighting the Russians. Of course the Health & Safety bods wouldn’t allow live bullets to be used – not even against their nemesis Clarkson – so he wore a special jacket, which picked up the laser ‘bullets’ that the soldiers fired.

We’ve also seen a Lotus Exige tracked by an Apache gunship, which was very exciting, proving the Norfolk-built sports-car remains the best handling car in the world by avoiding the helicopter’s laser missile lock altogether (there was a fake missile lock and destruction of the Exige at the end of the piece). Yet we’ve similarly seen tanks chasing Range Rovers, also with a fake missile hit at the end of the piece. Too much similarity is an accusation also raised over numerous games of car football, caravan bashing, excessive supercar coverage and so on.

Other critics say even some of the language is repetitive. Clarkson has used the word ‘savage’ to describe several cars’ acceleration: the Enzo, Nissan GT-R and the Ariel Atom being three examples.

Other critics complain about the resources used and some of the statistics for producing
Top Gear
are indeed mind-boggling. In 2009, the Ministry of Defence attracted a fairly heavy battering of criticism when it was revealed that they had spent 141 days on
Top Gear
stunts – this at a time when there was frequent demands for troops in combat to be supplied with more armour and other life-protecting equipment. The
Top Gear
stunts included using specialist military equipment worth billions of pounds. Information was made public following a canny claim by the Press Association, who were then able to reveal that among the MoD ‘appearances’ were: the Apache helicopter trying to get that missile lock on the Exige, a parachutist from the Red Devils
display team racing Richard Hammond in a Porsche Cayenne,
HMS Ark Royal
being used in a film about the Rolls-Royce Phantom, an RAF Typhoon racing a Bugatti Veyron at RAF Coningsby airfield, a beach assault with the Royal Marines while driving a Ford Fiesta, including Lynx helicopters and amphibious landing craft and a game of ‘British bulldog’ against high-tech armoured vehicles.

The MoD usually supplied this hardware free of charge and argued this was brilliant publicity for a generation who might be considering a role in the armed forces. They further responded to the criticism by pointing out that a 30-second advertisement for the MoD would cost at least £50,000 and that all filming took place during scheduled training hours: ‘Showcasing our people and equipment on popular television programmes is an excellent way to raise public awareness about the work of the armed forces and to encourage support for our troops.’

However, the real problem for the
Top Gear
producers is this: how do you keep coming up with ideas to fill an entire hour’s worth of TV every Sunday? To date, there have been 15 series of the new generation of the programme, covering 123 one-hour episodes. That’s a lot of TV. Then there are the specials, spin-offs and charity episodes. The crew might spend many days on location filming a piece (and an inconsiderable amount of cash in the process) only for that feature to use up perhaps ten minutes of screen time. There are – unavoidably – a finite number of ways to review cars, talk about them and show them off. Likewise, there are only so many words you can use to describe speed, acceleration, power, handling and so on.

Although it’s understandable that critics raise such complaints, it seems extremely unforgiving and harsh when directed towards a production set-up that is widely regarded as one of the finest in modern television. And that brings me back
to being a
Top Gear
fan: the show’s critics may sometimes be right but I still love seeing the gang do this stuff.

In turn, the
Top Gear
team is usually pretty thick-skinned about any abuse. Indeed, Clarkson is not about to concede to all the
Top Gear
haters. He has variously defended his words and the show’s actions, but as we have seen, when he feels he has overstepped the mark then he will apologise. In the face of growing dissent over his brusque approach to so many subjects, Clarkson sounded weary when writing in
Top Gear
magazine that the criticisms of him were as much indicative of an ever-growing and insidious culture of positive discrimination, which he felt was beginning to suffocate TV and media creativity in general. He suggested in their liberal haste to balance out too many white heterosexual male presenters, TV bosses were obsessed with having ‘black Muslim lesbians’ on TV shows and continued: ‘Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works but here we have
Top Gear
setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them.’

The article was in the wake of the BBC having to combat the flames of a ‘racism’ row in 2009 surrounding the highly popular
Strictly Come Dancing
, when Anton Du Beke referred off-screen to his dance partner Laila Rouass as a ‘Paki’. Du Beke immediately apologised, but then the show’s presenter Bruce Forsyth said the country needed to get a sense of humour, which further angered some people. Brucie himself then issued a statement to clarify his words, saying, ‘Racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable.’ And just as the BBC was attempting to draw a line under the controversy, Clarkson penned his far-from-innocuous thoughts in
Top Gear
magazine. As is often the way, however, his words were selectively quoted: yes, he’d said that but he also defended women drivers and asked why there were none in Formula 1. By
way of proving that women are brilliant drivers, he finished the column saying the worst driver in the world was
Top Gear
’s own studio director.

Clarkson’s producer, his old school friend Andy Wilman, is even less forgiving. He admits that he finds it hard to take the BBC seriously when his team are hauled in over yet another complaint and has also gone on record saying that he ‘can’t be arsed with Ofcom’.

On one occasion in 2009, it momentarily seemed as if the
Top Gear
haters might have finally secured their victory after all. Shortly after the Gordon Brown ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’ incident and the later c-word furore,
Top Gear
ran a compelling feature on the new V12 Aston Martin Vantage (Series 13, Episode 7), with the usual insightful and entertaining comments about a car that the show had historically been extremely positive about. At the end of the piece, however, Clarkson was filmed driving the beautiful car through classic British country roads but he suddenly turned melancholy, mulling in quiet tones about how that type of car was under increasing pressure from noise, safety and environmental campaigners. Perhaps in any other series, this might have been taken at face value but given recent problems, his closing comment that this ‘feels like an ending’ was imbued with massive symbolism. There was no last-minute gag, no tongue-in-cheek side remark or cheeky look to camera: only what appeared to be genuine sadness.

That same night the internet was swamped with rumours on Twitter, in chat rooms and forums – was
Top Gear
over? Was Clarkson tipping us off this was it, that the game was up? Was that shot of the Aston cruising over the green hills the last-ever clip of
Top Gear
?

Well, no. The BBC denied this was the end and said a programme as popular as
Top Gear
would not come to a close
without the public being duly notified more formally in advance. Clarkson swiftly backed up his employers, saying in his
Sun
column that the show would return for a new series unless he got ‘struck by a giant meteorite or spontaneously combusts’. In fact, they had already started to film new episodes and so, in an indignant verbal volley bound to infuriate all
Top Gear
’s many critics, Clarkson went on to insist: ‘Fire up the Vantage!’

A
n enduring and favourite
Top Gear
feature is the
so-called
‘Cheap Car Challenge’. Clearly this part of the programme is not used to review new cars, but usually serves as a way to prove (or disprove) a point about the motoring/transport world or sometimes just to have a ludicrous day out. Budgets range from under £1,000 to as much as £10,000 when they were buying 1970s’ supercars (a Maserati Merak, a Ferrari 308 GT4 and a Lamborghini Urraco). The team has also spent £5,000 finding a track day car that’s useable on normal roads and among many others, tried a ‘How much lorry do you get for £5,000?’ They also filmed a cheap Porsche challenge and then a follow-up: the ‘Cheap Coupés that aren’t Porsches’ test.

So, for the category of challenges that are filmed to prove a point, we see them buying a car for £100 to prove it’s cheaper to drive old bangers to Manchester than catch a train (which cost about £180). Clarkson’s Volvo 760 GLE won, principally because
he only paid £1 for it! It was picked up as a former trade-in at a local dealership close to his Chipping Norton home. He’d been concerned that purchasing the car himself would leave him accused of using his profile to get a cheap head-start, so he actually sent his wife in to buy it.

The
Top Gear
team has also driven around the M25 in a petrol and diesel version of the same car to examine fuel efficiency, attempted to get from London to Edinburgh and back in an Audi on one tank of diesel and subjected a Renault Scenic and Ford
C-Max
to one year’s worth of wear in a night to test its hardiness. To prove roadworks take too long to complete, they undertook a week’s worth of repairs near Bedford, Warwickshire and tried to complete the job in one day. With sustenance provided by roadside berries and later fish and chips, the team and their gang actually finished the task on time.

Some of the challenges are mainly for comedy value, albeit with an undercurrent of seriousness, such as the ‘Can you buy an Alfa Romeo for £1,000 or less without it completely ruining your life all the time?’ For other challenges, however, the team is just having fun, there’s no serious side to a piece whatsoever and it really is all about the entertainment. For example, how about the time they tried to make their own police cars for £1,500? Equipping their chosen steeds with various frankly ridiculous contraptions, such as a homemade stinger, a paint-spraying theft prevention device and wheel spikes, among other tasks they had to attend and clear up a traffic accident and then best of all, chase a criminal – in this case a white-suited tame racing driver called Ronnie Stigs – around a track and apprehend him.

The only slivers of possible seriousness were the digs reserved for the Health and Safety Executive, making the point that before a police team can deploy the so-called ‘boxing in’ technique, in theory they have to meet 13 separate criteria – all in the heat of a
high-speed car chase. This piece was interspersed with a policeman telling the camera in dry detail about the methodology of chasing stolen vehicles, no doubt fulfilling the advertorial appeal of the feature to the Force. As ever, Clarkson scoffed at the protracted way of stopping criminals and the bureaucracy involved: in his opinion, you should be able to ram the car thief off the road or pull up alongside the vehicle and blow his head off. Now there’s one for the Police Complaints Authority!

The cheap car premise has, of course, also been used for some of the show’s best long-form features. It’s at the heart of the previously mentioned ‘US Road Trip’ but also two further
Top Gear
specials, namely the treks through Vietnam and Bolivia. In the former, they travel 1,000 miles from Ho Chi Minh City north to near Hanoi, unusually this time mainly on motorbikes. The same distance is travelled through Bolivia in South America, a journey party to some hilarious scenes trying to get their three chosen vehicles on a raft, repairing a fuel cap with a tampon and waterproofing an engine with a lubricated condom. Sounds daft, but this particular special was a big ratings winner for the BBC.

The same restricted budgets were the impetus for the team’s excursion through Botswana for one of the programme’s other specials. With
Top Gear
’s ever-expanding horizons, it was perhaps inevitable that they headed over to Africa. They were sent packing with just £1,500 each, under instruction to buy a strictly two-wheel drive, non-off-road vehicle with which to drive across the entire country, from the eastern border of Zimbabwe to the western border of Namibia, a distance of around 1,000 miles. The rules also stated that if one of the three cars broke down beyond reasonable repair, as a punishment the journey would have to be completed in a VW Beetle because they all dislike that particular German car so much.

Clarkson chose a fetching 1981 Lancia Beta Coupé, which
proved a disastrous choice and was constantly breaking down. Richard Hammond opted for a 40bhp Opel Kadett from 1963 (we are told it’s the same age as Jezza but in better nick) and James May bought a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 230E. The first challenge was to prove to people who live in Surrey that you don’t need a 4x4 if you live up a lane that occasionally gets leaves on the road. The cars quickly started to go wrong, with the Lancia’s rally heritage counting for nothing and May finding he had the knob from a five-gear Merc glued to what he now discovered was a four-gear car. Driving through dense bush and wooded plains, the cars nonetheless somehow made it to camp, albeit with Hammond’s broken alternator meaning he had to light up the path with a hand-torch.

While the ‘wooden spoon’ of the old VW Beetle followed them like some automotive Grim Reaper, the trio started the most obviously dangerous part of the journey: to cross the Okavango Delta game reserve, which is teeming with wild animals. By this point, Clarkson and May had already stripped their cars of much of the bodywork, so they had to stop off at a shanty town first to have hasty repairs done, using tarpaulin and bits of old wood. While May wasn’t looking, Clarkson hid a cow’s head in his boot in the hope that it would attract lions but this backfired when they tried to move the animal’s head to May’s tent, only to discover they’d put it in Hammond’s sleeping quarters by mistake.

After sinking in a stagnant pond, Hammond’s car was completely flooded but he declined the offer of simply shooting the floor to let the water out. By now he had become sentimentally attached to his classic car and the other two presenters fell about laughing when he revealed that he’d named the Opel ‘Oliver’. The last laugh was with Oliver, though: after a night of extensive repairs from the flood damage, the car was
raring to go, leaving Clarkson, ‘speechless for first time in 47 years.’ Afterwards they had to cross the salt flats of the Makgadikgadi Pan, which left Clarkson and May’s stripped-out cars (and eyes) filled with dust (and yes, the decision to drive over those fragile salt flats caused uproar among environmentalists; fears of an influx of boy racers flying to Botswana to copy the salt flats’ race proved unfounded, however).

All three made it to the Namibian border, but who was the winner? None of them, it transpired, because only the dreaded VW Beetle trailing behind had actually made the entire journey without modification! It’s unlikely the £4,500 spent on the vehicles for this particular Cheap Car Challenge was even a fraction of the show’s final budget, though.