The Top Gear Story (8 page)

The list of more daft
Top Gear
challenges reads like a surreal selection of crazy ideas that a bunch of young boys have dreamt up after perhaps having their first-ever pint of beer:
making a convertible People Carrier; grannies doing doughnuts and handbrake turns; can a rally pit team strip and rebuild a car faster than four women get ready for a night out?; can a stretch limo jump over a wedding party?; how many motorcycles can a double-decker bus jump over?; how many bouncy castles can an ice-cream van jump?; what's the best wig for driving in an open-top?; how easy is it to create a life-size remote controlled car?; can they beat the record for the most complete sideways rolls in a car …

As Richard Hammond said when he was about to launch the Robin Reliant into space: ‘If you're eight years old, you probably want to watch this …'

O
f course, all this japery with blowing up caravans, encouraging nuns to skid, breaking numerous speed records and generally acting out endless schoolboy fantasies with cars makes for great TV, but where
Top Gear
really raise the bar is during their more substantial challenges. These are best exemplified by the small handful of so-called specials they have attempted. There have been four specials within actual series (‘USA', ‘Botswana', ‘Vietnam' and ‘Bolivia') plus two further stand-alone programmes (‘
Top Gear
Winter Olympics' and ‘The Polar Special').

In this writer's opinion, the best special of them all is the fabulous ‘US Road Trip', first screened in Episode 3 of Series 9. The team hate fly/drive holidays and contest that the logistics of this type of trip and the myriad of problems encountered means that it's not a holiday at all, but a living hell. So, the premise was simple enough: is it possible to fly to America and
buy a car more cheaply than you can hire one for a fortnight? Thereafter, can you travel through four US states and then sell the same car and get most of your money back? Equipped with just $1,000 each, they set about finding out … and very nearly never made it back.

Clarkson's relationship – if there is one at all – with the USA is strained at best. He calls it ‘the United States of Paranoia' and has been openly critical of Barack Obama, particularly in the aftermath of the President's acidic attacks on BP following the Gulf of Mexico oil spillage of 2010. Clarkson points out the absurdity of the fact that in the US, you need a permit for most things except buying firearms.

The plan was to create
Top Gear
's very own road movie. As inspiration, the production crew used famous American flicks such as
Thelma & Louise
and
National Lampoon's Vacation
. Initially, the trip was meant to be merely a Cheap Car Challenge spread over two segments, but as the backroom staff researched and prepared the film, it became clear that they had enough scope to produce a lengthy and highly entertaining stand-alone programme. Surprisingly, it is also noted on their website as one of the most gruelling shoots ever, even taking into account the later ‘Polar' and ‘African' specials.

The team flew into the US and stayed at a very upmarket hotel before the trip began. On the first day, the trio was sent out to the rather salubrious areas of Miami to purchase a classic American car for their $1,000. With every dealership they tried, the options became more and more limited until eventually they were left with a handful of dishevelled-looking car lots in the openly dangerous parts of town. Dealerships such as ‘We Aim To Please Motors' and ‘Adolf's Cars' are all visited. At one point, Clarkson radios Hammond to tell him not to drive any further along a certain road as he will almost definitely get shot. Even the car
dealers admit this, proudly showing Clarkson their rifles and handguns, explaining theft was a big problem and that a sniper's sight was entirely justifiable just in case the thief managed to start driving away. Clarkson was on brilliant form, seemingly unmoved by all this and even began to barter for the cars, by saying: ‘How much murdering goes on here?'

However, the choice of car was limited and their final selection is hilarious: Clarkson bought a battered Chevrolet Camaro RS, principally because it's ‘very popular with murderers'. It's a typical American muscle car, with a five-litre V8 engine, but this particular model also came with no air-conditioning, a broken rev counter, a radio with only one (gospel) station and just three previous murderers. He even found an old shirt hidden under the bodywork, which they presumed was from the last victim of the previous owner. When Clarkson took the Camaro back to the team's luxury hotel for the night, no one had forewarned the valet and he promptly asked the presenter to leave the premises.

On his first-ever trip to the USA and complete with cowboy hat and boots, Hammond rocked up in a Dodge Ram pick-up truck. James May was last – as usual – and arrived in an enormous 1989 Cadillac Sedan, which was so big that Hammond observed that it was a long walk simply to stroll around it. It had newspaper repairs to some of the bodywork and a broken number-plate saying ‘Titanic'. May didn't care, he loved it. Meanwhile, Clarkson was already homesick: ‘Florida is full of awful old people, fat people, nasty insects, people who offer you cheese and then shoot you!'

They all set off north out of Miami for a 90-mile trip along the highway to a race track. Funnily enough, the
Top Gear
team later revealed that one of the hardest parts of the show's production was finding a track in NASCAR-loving southern states that wasn't just an oval. This, according to Clarkson, is because having both
right- and left-hand bends is too complicated for Americans. Eventually they located Moroso Motorsports Park, which was also infested with alligators.

Challenge One within the special was a timed lap around Moroso and for this, they introduced The Stig's American cousin, a very overweight racing driver wearing identical white racing overalls and helmet, said to be a CIA experiment gone wrong. He even emerged out of a classic white-trash trailer. The Camaro won in 1.09 minutes, easily ahead of May's lumbering Cadillac, which Hammond admitted had aged him just waiting to finish.

The second challenge asked the trio to accelerate to 50mph before slamming on their brakes to avoid plunging into an alligator-infested pond. They all managed to survive … just! Then they were able to set off for stage three, an 800-mile road trip to New Orleans in the sweltering heat and humidity of the southern states. After running out of fuel and fixing a flat battery, they finally got started but by now Clarkson was extremely grumpy with the USA, warning the viewer that if they were thinking of going there, they should know that ‘everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude. It's not the holiday programme, it's the truth!' By this point the viewer was left eager for Clarkson & Co. to launch a
no-holds
-barred version of
Holiday
!

After a pit-stop to fit a barbecue to the back of his pick-up, an internal shower to Clarkson's Camaro and a clothes hanger (!) to May's Sedan, the team were informed that the only food they could eat that night was road-kill. Taking the names ‘Brokeback', ‘The Murderer' and ‘The Captain', the trio then abort their attempts at CB radio, saying truckers only ever talk about the weather and prostitutes. Finally, they found their campsite for the night, only for Clarkson to disappear while May and
Hammond argued over who was going to ‘peel' the only road-kill they'd found: a squirrel. So, where had Jezza gone?

What other show on TV would strap a cow to a car? Well, Alan Partridge once did, but he's not a real person. It's a fantastically surreal moment when Clarkson's Camaro appears over the horizon with a huge, bloated cow tied to its roof. The heifer in question had died of natural causes by the side of the road (although this didn't stop some
Top Gear
snipers complaining to the BBC about animal cruelty). In fact, it had died some days before being mounted to Clarkson's Camaro and once attached to the roof, the dead beast quickly began dripping bodily fluids all over the bodywork. For months after the film, the crew found their cameras, clothing and equipment smelling of dead cow.

While May slept, Clarkson and Hammond sabotaged his
air-con
and the night-vision footage of them sniggering as they ripped out his wiring is really no more than two naughty schoolboys up to no good on a field trip away from home. This particular clip perfectly sums up an undeniable part of the
Top Gear
appeal: it's a private joke shared by 350 million people, the equivalent of being invited in to the popular gang at school who play all the best pranks, but without having to take any of the risks. It's a voyeur's nirvana of practical jokes and
dressing-room
banter.

By now, all three presenters had become attached to their old bangers but the next challenge would not only deface the cars but also see one of
Top Gear
's most genuinely sinister moments. The idea of ‘baiting' rednecks was not a new one – originally there had been talk of driving a pink Smart Car as far as possible across Texas without being attacked. However, eventually the production crew issued the trio with a different challenge: each was allowed to paint provocative slogans on their rivals' cars. So, Hammond daubed Clarkson's car with the words ‘Country &
Western is rubbish' and ‘Nascar sucks' – given both are staples of Deep South life, this was a bad start. May's car was adorned with Clarkson's slogans ‘Hillary For President' and it's worth bearing in mind that in the Republican-loving south Mrs Clinton is seen by many as the political Antichrist. Worst still – and as it turned out most dangerous of all – were the bright pink slogans that James May painted on Hammond's car: ‘Man Love Rules' and ‘I am Bi'. Given Hammond was sporting Aviator sunglasses, a cowboy hat plus boots and was constantly chewing gum – in other words, a southern cowboy stereotype – this choice of car graffiti turned out to be one provocation too far. Hammond had jokingly said the challenge was a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity to get Jeremy killed' but he didn't know then how close he was to being frighteningly correct.

The convoy pulled up for petrol in a Bible-belt town called, bizarrely, Baghdad. Events soon took a nasty turn as they started to fill up. Suddenly the female station owner stormed out and started to shout at the trio, with one incensed comment caught on-camera being, ‘Are you gay and looking to see how long it takes to get beat up in a Hick town?' The presenters were lost for words and clearly unnerved, even Clarkson, but it was about to get much worse: she disappeared to get ‘the boys' and before long, a pick-up full of very large and scary-looking men skidded into the forecourt. Moments later, rocks began to crash down on the presenters' cars as well as those of the crew. Genuinely fearing for their safety, the
Top Gear
convoy sped off. The appalled southerners gave chase and the screen footage was even left blank for a few moments when the team realised they could be in big trouble. After a frantic stop to hastily wash off the offending graffiti and a frenzied race to the county border, as in an unexpected real-life horror movie such as
Jeepers Creepers
, both trio and crew eventually made it to safety.

Clarkson was left to rue the whole frightening episode: ‘In certain parts of America, people have started to mate with vegetables!' On-camera, he admits that he's now so homesick that he pines for a homosexual British flight attendant to serve him tea and scones.

The brilliant piece of television came to a close with devastating poignancy: they arrived in New Orleans after all their tomfoolery and that redneck incident, only to suddenly be brought back down to earth by the horrific devastation caused to that city by Hurricane Katrina. The dynamic brilliantly brings home the human cost of this natural disaster. As the three drove round what looked like a war zone, their faces were genuinely pallid, open-mouthed and speechless at the blitzed landscape. Jeremy asks how America can sleep at night knowing New Orleans is still in such a mess one year after the hurricane struck. Suddenly, all thoughts of selling their cars and winning any challenge were gone; eventually they worked with a local mission to give the cars away to people whose lives had been wrecked by the storm.

Back in Blighty, Clarkson was still clearly exasperated and the following week's column in
The Times
made no attempt to hide his contempt for much of what he had just seen. Having kissed the ground when he landed back in Blighty, he proceeded to rail against the paranoia, the bureaucracy, the conservatism and litigation culture in what he called America's ‘police state'.

When the team reunited in the studio to screen the trip, they revealed that in New Orleans an American lawyer had expressed her disappointment at the car they'd given away, saying it was different to what she'd thought had been offered, and apparently even threatening to sue for misrepresentation. James May was safe, though – he couldn't even give his Cadillac away! This masterful
Top Gear
special ends by rightfully being described as
a ‘proper
Boy's Own
adventure', before Clarkson concludes they have learnt two important lessons: yes, you can buy rather than rent and second, don't go to America. Genius!

A
s typified by the inclusion of Stig's American cousin in the superb ‘US Road Trip' special, the brilliant presenting talents of the three main characters in
Top Gear
are substantially complemented by the show's ‘tame racing driver', a cartoon character which had, in a very short space of time, become a central part of the programme's massive appeal.

At the time of writing, the real identity of The Stig has recently been the subject of a High Court dispute between the BBC and HarperCollins, publishers of the life story of a certain racing driver.
Top Gear
fans were shocked and excited in equal measure when it was announced that the man behind the famous white helmet had written his autobiography and was therefore about to reveal one of television's most closely guarded secrets but for now, let's rewind and trace the origins and history of one of modern TV's most famous images.

The Stig wasn't always so well known. For the debut
appearance on the first show of the new
Top Gear
, the character was a pragmatic and safe necessity. All three of
Top Gear
's presenters are known to be very capable drivers indeed, far superior to the man on the street, but the quantity and speed of so many of the cars reviewed meant it made sense to have a ‘professional' driver to really give the cars a lashing around the track.

So Andy Wilman and Jeremy Clarkson dreamt up the idea of employing a professional racing driver, who would remain anonymous at all times. There were a number of contenders who might fit the bill, but they eventually plumped for Perry McCarthy. Clarkson approached McCarthy at a party also attended by their mutual friend, Damon Hill. He explained that they wanted an anonymous racing driver for the show and that he would be called The Gimp – inspired by the silent masked figure in a particularly brutal scene from
Pulp Fiction
. Perry was interested, but not if they used that name, so Wilman and Clarkson flagged up a moniker they'd first heard used to describe new boys at Repton: The Stig was born.

Early Stig was a much less refined caricature at this point. Clarkson made his infamous gag about racing drivers having ‘tiny little brains and worthless opinions' and also pointed out that they were usually very dull, something he termed ‘Mansell Syndrome'. They didn't know The Stig's real name and didn't want to – all they wanted him to do was to go out on track and drive fast.

The Stig's first feature in the Zonda is then run and the
all-black
mystery driver clearly seen wearing green gloves rather than matching black ones. Also, the camera angles at this point are from the rear left passenger seats, rather than up close to The Stig from the front passenger seat, as became the norm in later series. The original angle actually showed more of the racetrack
from The Stig's viewpoint and was in fact a very interesting approach. Back in the studio, the presenters apologised for the sounds of the Lounge that The Stig was playing, claiming he played this elevator music to calm himself down on track (maybe his dubious musical tastes were inspired by Clarkson, himself a huge Genesis fan; he'd even written sleeve notes to their box set,
Selling England by the Pound
). Notably, The Stig drove the Zonda so fast that Hammond then issued a challenge to any company who had a production car that they thought could beat its time.

Within a few episodes, The Stig's listening habits were universally abhorred and have since been the subject of much analysis over the years. Suffice to say, you wouldn't really want to have a long motorway journey with him, listening as he does to such music as Prog Rock, power ballads, jingles, Elton John, Abba, Chas & Dave, pan pipes, speeches, talking books, Morse Code and whale songs, to name but a few.

Each appearance by The Stig is pre-empted by a weird introduction and over the years these bizarre descriptions have taken on a life of their own; initially they did not happen with every appearance on screen and if they did, they would only be a brief one-liner such as ‘His Holiness The Stig!' However, over time the introductions increasingly began to reveal odd snippets about this mysterious character, usually taking the form of ‘Some say …' followed by, ‘All we know is he's called The Stig!' Personal characteristics include having a left nipple shaped like the race track at the Nürburgring, his skin apparently has the same texture as a dolphin's, if you tune your radio to 88.4 you can hear his thoughts, after making love he bites the head off his partner, his earwax tastes of Turkish Delight, he's banned from Chichester, he isn't machine-washable, his tears are adhesive and if he caught fire then he would burn for 1,000 days.

As mentioned, the very first Stig was in fact the revered racing
driver Perry McCarthy. Stepney-born McCarthy has a long and varied history of racing some of the fastest cars on the planet so he was perfectly equipped to be the show's test driver. A former Formula 1 driver for Andrea Moda, he also tested cars for Benetton, Arrows, Williams and BMW F1 before injury ended his career. Perry was once dubbed ‘racing's unluckiest driver' but went on to build a hugely successful career in Le Mans. His reputation for being passionate about his chosen sport was confirmed when he once returned to a race circuit just nine days after his appendix had ruptured. He qualified for that race but was apparently withdrawn by his own team's doctors when they noticed his stitches had burst and his overalls were soaked in blood. During his career, he suffered some big crashes, including one at 170mph that his hero Ayrton Senna said he was lucky to have survived. McCarthy already knew Wilman and Clarkson and so when they approached him with the idea on that fateful night, he was delighted to be asked. At this stage, the secrecy was just ‘a bit of fun' and he has since opined that no one could have ever imagined that the character would capture the public's imagination as it has.

McCarthy has since revealed that there had been plans to have him as a presenter on the show a few series in, not masked and hidden, but unfortunately this never transpired. He also quashed rumours that there were several Stigs in those early series, stating that it was always him apart from two occasions when other commitments prevented him from playing the role, at which point Julian Bailey – a former Formula 1 driver who raced for the Tyrrell and Lotus teams – stood in.

Perry enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger requirements of the job. Speaking to the
Mirror
in August 2010, he gave some fascinating insights into his role as The Stig: ‘At first, it was great fun. I lost count of the times I'd be standing in a bar and
some guy would be going, “Of course, it's Michael Schumacher.” I never said anything.'

He has also said that he often played the role 24/7 when working at the BBC. So, he would go in full costume into the BBC canteen and even keep his visor in place when trying to drink coffee through a straw or shovel sandwiches in through the small opening. Perhaps best of all, as Gambon suggested, Perry often spoke in a French accent – albeit faked – for extra mystery.

Almost straightaway, the ‘Who is The Stig?' conundrum caught the imagination of the viewing public and within a few episodes of Series 1, websites and chat rooms speculated frantically about his identity. The intrigue was sufficiently intense that in January 2003, the
Mirror
ran their own exposé claiming it was McCarthy all along. Quoting a ‘show insider' as a source, the newspaper approached Perry about the story, but he simply said: ‘I do know who The Stig is, but I cannot comment any further.' Besides, the talented driver himself was too busy at the time racing in Le Mans to worry about speculation, a neat reminder that The Stig is anything but a cartoon character and always a very real racer with extreme driving talents.

However, the ‘black' Stig lasted no longer than the first series. After McCarthy revealed his identity in his excellent 2002 book,
Flat Out, Flat Broke
, his contract was not renewed. By this time, he had already started to tire of the rigours of the job, though: ‘Burning round a track in a “Reasonably Priced Car” week after week soon became a chore. I always gave it 100 per cent but I was already getting tired of it.' After a priceless Jag was tested and a complaint to the BBC followed, McCarthy became disillusioned. Remember, at the time he was racing for Audi in the Le Mans series and earning a hefty six-figure wage: ‘I'd had enough. And, I think, to be fair they'd had enough of me. I was becoming tricky to handle. They didn't renew my contract and the
money was rubbish.' When interviewed on BBC
Breakfast News
in 2010, however, McCarthy was still visibly excited by the memories of playing the character. Referring to his caricature as ‘Stiggy', he said it was a period of great fun.

Of course, the demise of the first Stig had to be reflected in the show itself. His departure was dressed up in a challenge for the opening programme of Series 3. After his final on-screen test driving the Porsche 996 GT3, Clarkson then announced that The Stig ‘went off and joined the Navy'. The black Stig was seen being taken to
HMS Invincible
and asked to attempt to take a
nitrous-oxide
-modified Jaguar XJ-S to 100mph in the same 200 metres that it takes a jet fighter to achieve the same speed prior to taking off from the flight deck. In the previous series, the old Jag had beaten a fleet of supercars in a straight drag so he certainly had enough speed. The Stig even sat in with the fighter pilots for their briefing: this was explained as The Stig ‘going
Top Gun
'.

On the aircraft carrier's flight deck, The Stig did indeed reach this speed but the carefully edited footage then showed him unable to stop and he careered off the end into the sea, off the coast of Portugal. All that was visible in the dark waters was a single black racing driver's glove. Back in the studio, Clarkson reported they had sent Navy divers down, but nothing had been found apart from the empty car.

Although the demise of the black Stig was as a direct result of McCarthy's departure, the filming of this aircraft carrier ‘accident' hugely raised the profile of the character. Rather than ‘killing him off', the ruse cleverly ramped up interest in the weird and wonderful figure. At the very start of the following week's episode, the new white Stig was introduced. Clarkson announced ‘The Stig is dead!' and then played a montage of video clips of the Man in Black's finest moments. He then said: ‘There's plenty more where he came from!' and went on to
introduce the new Stig, standing on a backlit pedestal, this time cloaked all in white while sound-tracked by the theme song from
2001: A Space Odyssey
. The Stig's first test was in a new BMW M3 CSL.

As we have seen, at first The Stig's main purpose was posting lap times in the array of supercars and more normal vehicles that the show was reviewing. Over the years, however, that role has expanded greatly as his fame and notoriety ballooned exponentially. For the ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' feature, The Stig was always on hand at Dunsfold, in costume and in character, to train each week's celebrity. As his fame grew, The Stig started to make other personal appearances too. Away from
Top Gear
, he has also appeared in numerous Clarkson DVD titles such as
Supercar Showdown
.

By 2008, The Stig was a bona-fide celebrity in his own right and as such, collected
Top Gear
's third award for ‘Best Factual Programme' at the 2008 British National Television Awards. At the ceremony, he did not speak but instead handed an acceptance letter from the
Top Gear
team to host Griff Rhys Jones. After an apology for the presenters not being there, the letter stated:

(Note: This was not the first time that the actual presenters couldn't make an awards ceremony. Three years before The Stig
filled in at the TV Awards, the show won an International Emmy in the ‘Non-Scripted Entertainment Category'. Clarkson was unable to attend the glitzy bash in New York and the reason he gave was that he was too busy writing the next show's script.
Top Gear
has also been voted ‘Best Programme of the Decade' by Channel 4, ahead of
Doctor Who
and
The Apprentice
, and has been nominated for numerous BAFTAs.)

Over the years, The Stig character has evolved into the focus of a massive slew of highly popular BBC merchandising activity. The 2009
Where's Stig?
book, published by BBC Books, sold in excess of 250,000 copies. For Christmas 2010, you could buy a Stig advent calendar, a Stig keyring, desk diary, toiletry bag, pocket diary, wall calendar, jigsaws, flash drive keyring, tax disc holder, travel mug, mugs, bubble bath, a sonic toothbrush,
T-shirts
, stationery, duvets, lunch bags, school backpacks, floating pens, torches, alarm clocks, mousemats, posters, a soap-on-a-rope and even a Stig remote control helicopter and a children's outfit. I've been doing the
Where's Stig?
puzzlebook since Christmas 2009 – with my son, obviously – and I still haven't a clue.

As
Top Gear
literally expanded its horizons around the world with numerous overseas specials, then likewise The Stig had to broaden his universe beyond the confines of the BBC canteen and Dunsfold airport. With typical
Top Gear
verve, the fans were thus introduced to an extended Stig family tree, with numerous blood-relations. So, we have had the Stig's African cousin, who appeared in their ‘Botswana' episode in Series 10. He was
dark-skinned
and wore only his racing boots and a loincloth – alongside, of course, his white helmet. His track test was conducted on a patch of wilderness passed off as a rally circuit. In ‘America', we had The Stig's American Cousin with a suitably gargantuan belly forced into a rather unforgiving white race suit.
He was re-named ‘The Big Stig' – not so much a broadened horizon as a bulging waistline.