Requiem For a Car Show
Requiem for a Car Show
The best TV car show of all time is dead. Top Gear as we knew it, is history. The BBC declined to renew the contract of the main force and presence behind the show, presenter Jeremy Clarkson. His two co-presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, said that if Jeremy was sacked, they would no longer participate in the show either. Thus ends the most successful and popular automobile show in the world.
Though I have long been a fan of British comedies, from old time classics like Benny Hill, Fawlty Towers, and Are You Being Served to more modern ones such as the Young Ones, Red Dwarf, Black Adder, and Mr. Bean, I was not familiar with British motoring shows. Until one day I saw a link in an email that intrigued me. Something about a guy rolling a Reliant Robin. It looked interesting, so I clicked on it. Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 Here is a much shorter, yet even funnier version, set to the Benny Hill Show theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130OVZcMEcA
The clip was so funny, I could not stop laughing. Sometime later on a cable TV schedule I saw a listing for a show called Top Gear. That name sounded kind of familiar and then somehow it clicked that it had something to do with this absolutely hilarious video I had seen. I thought if that short clip was so awesomely funny, why don’t I give the whole show a try? After that first episode, I was hooked.
I have always liked cars. At one point in my childhood when I liked to draw them, I thought I could one day make a living designing them. I was a big fan of American muscle cars of days gone by and exotic European supercars and dreamcars. Top Gear put that fanhood into, pardon the pun, top gear. Watching the show I could vicariously experience cars I could only dream about and learn about ones I never even knew existed. Bugattis, Lambos, Aston Martins, Ferraris, McLarens, Boxsters, Bentleys, Porsches, Jaguars, and so many more that I can’t even think of them all.
Besides the spectacular cars, races, stunts, road trips, and driving, there was the entertainment factor. Top Gear was one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. In addition to the car knowledge, the presenters are performers and comedians in their own right. They made motoring and racing FUN! The interplay and banter between the three presenters was a remarkable chemistry rarely achieved in the realm of TV. Clarkson, May, and Hammond took great joy in insulting, belittling, mocking, arguing with, and making fun of each other at every opportunity, then the next minute they were best friends and teammates. Which left one wondering which was the act and which was the real relationship.
Each had their own endearing personality which the other two used to punch him with. Clarkson was the huge orangutan. May was Captain Slow. And Hammond was the closet American and country dwarf. And let us not forget the Stig. The first time I saw the Stig on the first full episode I watched, I didn’t know what to think of him. Initially I thought he was just a test driver the show used to time laps in cars they tested. Then I learned he/it was a character in his/its own right, one of the most in depth and interesting characters that never speaks on television.
Besides cars a normal person would never get the pleasure of experiencing, the show also went to exotic locations to film. From being the first and so far only people to drive wheeled vehicles to the North Pole, Top Gear also made road trips or specials in such places as the source of the Nile in Africa, Vietnam, the Middle East, the infamous trips to Argentina and the southeastern United States, all over Europe, and even driving from the Amazon rainforest across the Atacama desert to the Pacific Ocean. I became aware of places I never even knew existed, such as the Nurburgring, Lake Como, Italy, and the abandoned Cuidad Real Central Airport in Spain.
The three presenters also built their own version of the Bridge on the River Kwai in Burma. They built their own electric vehicles, built their own ambulances, made their own hovercraft out of a van, made their own stretch limousines out of existing normal-sized cars, made a train out of cars and caravans, even turned a caravan into an airship. More often than not, their efforts ended in colossal and hilarious failure, thus inspiring the Top Gear motto, “Ambitious but Rubbish.” The creative and comedic genius behind the show, its writing, and its production values will never be matched by any other car show, and leaves Top Gear far ahead of most other shows of any type.
With Clarkson as the anchor and May and Hammond as the foundation, Top Gear became not only the most popular motoring show in the world, it became the most popular show on BBC and a cash cow for the network, earning over a billion dollars during its run. Because of all the money Top Gear brought in, the BBC was able to turn a blind eye to, excuse, or ignore the foibles of Clarkson, whose opinionated political incorrectness often infuriated one group or another. Which was also a good reason why so many others liked him and he and the show were such a great success for the network.
I didn’t always agree with some of the things Jeremy did or said. In fact, sometimes he could be a boorish oaf, as can anyone. But overall I liked him. Especially because he didn’t care about being politically correct as defined by the Left and was a stout antagonist of Leftist “Global Warming/Climate Change” hoaxsters, spin masters, and alarmists. On the air, he often made fun of and belittled them and their ludicrous claims. For instance, after driving on ice to the North Pole, he said something to the effect that they shouldn’t even be there because according to the “Global Warming” crowd, there should be no ice and they should all be under water. On another show, he commented about how cold the water was in an English lake, despite the effects of “Global Warming.”
When Bob Geldoff was a guest on the show and scolded him for not being concerned with the environment, Clarkson rebutted with, “I’m aware of the environment. I just don’t care about it.” You gotta love a guy like that who is willing to speak the truth to power and the public and have no fear of the consequences. His “holy trinity” is “oil, gas, and coal.” That statement alone says enough of what he thinks about enviro-fascists and green-freaks.
The supposedly offensive ethnic jokes he often got into hot water for by saying were just that – jokes, meant to be humorous, not taken seriously. Jokes a thousand standup comedians say a thousand times a day in a thousand bars and nobody cares. But with the mass insanity of Liberal-imposed “political correctness” making a mockery of everything in Western culture, offended parties whined and cried and protested to the BBC. Clarkson was warned and reprimanded, but because of the immense popularity of Top Gear and the enormous amount of money it brought in, he kept his job and became even more popular. In later years, though, the patience of the executives at the BBC began to wear thin as they balanced the mutually exclusive concepts of making money with being politically correct to satisfy the Left and its worker drone minions.
The final straw came a couple of weeks ago when Clarkson had a run-in with a Top Gear producer. According to reports and witnesses, after returning the hotel where the cast and crew were staying at about 9:30 PM after a long, hard day of filming, Clarkson became incensed when told that the hotel restaurant was closed and there was no hot food available. Allegedly, he cursed out and berated one of the producers for a good thirty minutes about not having any arrangements for a hot dinner. This public tirade was followed by about thirty seconds of Clarkson physically assaulting the same producer with his fists. This was not the first time Clarkson resorted to using his fists to resolve a dispute. As I said, Jeremy did have his faults. Year earlier, Piers Morgan was on the receiving end. The assault on the producer was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the BBC was concerned. After demurring for about a week, they canned Clarkson and killed Top Gear.
I wonder if this is what Clarkson wanted. He self-reported the incident to his superiors in the BBC, knowing he was already on his final warning and thus very, very thin ice. His victim the producer said nothing. Clarkson seemed happy, content, even smug after he was fired. So it makes me wonder if this was the way he wanted out, the way he wanted to separate from the BBC. Now as a free agent, along with his other two sidekicks, the trio will be free to pursue their own deal. After the popularity of the presenters and Top Gear, not to mention all the money it made for the BBC, any network with any intelligence would snap the three of them up in a heartbeat knowing they already have the foundation for a popular and profitable show just by hiring Clarkson, May, and Hammond.
Though the trio would no longer have access to the Top Gear brand, format, and everything that goes with it, including the Stig, it is the presenters that were the show, along with the exotic cars and the terrible cars, such as the Reliant Robin. And the BBC doesn’t control access to top dreamcars and supercars. So a Clarkson, May, Hammond collaboration, even without the Top Gear theme, would still be smash success to all us Gearheads.
Any attempt to resurrect or continue Top Gear without Clarkson, May, and Hammond is almost certainly doomed to fail. This is evidenced by the spinoff copycat shows the brand made in the US, Australia, and other places. None of them caught on like the original series and were not much more than cheap imitations of the real thing. The BBC must also realize this because I just read that less than two weeks after sacking Clarkson the network has already dismantled the Top Gear set, not wasting any time after getting rid of the man they probably loved to hate. I just have to wonder what they intend to do about replacing all the money Top Gear brought in to fund other shows on the network.
Top Gear ignited in me a burning interest in not only exotic European supercars, but also in British culture, which if not for my love of the show, I would not care about. In fact, after watching so many hours of Top Gear I’ve actually unintentionally adopted some of the peculiarities of British spoken English in my everyday speech.
If not for Top Gear, I would have no reason at all to watch BBC America. Though I only belatedly became aware of and then a huge fan of the show in the last year or two, now that it is history, I will have to content myself with watching reruns of seasons and episodes I have not seen yet. I can already watch the current episodes and those of the last few years that I have seen over and over and over again without getting tired of them, which to me is the mark of a memorable and near-perfect show. That is until, as I hope and am fairly confident of, Clarkson, May, and Hammond land together on some other network with a new car show, whatever that may be called. High Gear? Highest Gear? Over the Top Gear?
In any case, after having experienced the finest motoring show of all time, I’ll forever be both a Petrolhead and a Gearhead. Long live Top Gear! Even in reruns.
Jeff Vanderslice
The best TV car show of all time is dead. Top Gear as we knew it, is history. The BBC declined to renew the contract of the main force and presence behind the show, presenter Jeremy Clarkson. His two co-presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, said that if Jeremy was sacked, they would no longer participate in the show either. Thus ends the most successful and popular automobile show in the world.
Though I have long been a fan of British comedies, from old time classics like Benny Hill, Fawlty Towers, and Are You Being Served to more modern ones such as the Young Ones, Red Dwarf, Black Adder, and Mr. Bean, I was not familiar with British motoring shows. Until one day I saw a link in an email that intrigued me. Something about a guy rolling a Reliant Robin. It looked interesting, so I clicked on it. Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8 Here is a much shorter, yet even funnier version, set to the Benny Hill Show theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130OVZcMEcA
The clip was so funny, I could not stop laughing. Sometime later on a cable TV schedule I saw a listing for a show called Top Gear. That name sounded kind of familiar and then somehow it clicked that it had something to do with this absolutely hilarious video I had seen. I thought if that short clip was so awesomely funny, why don’t I give the whole show a try? After that first episode, I was hooked.
I have always liked cars. At one point in my childhood when I liked to draw them, I thought I could one day make a living designing them. I was a big fan of American muscle cars of days gone by and exotic European supercars and dreamcars. Top Gear put that fanhood into, pardon the pun, top gear. Watching the show I could vicariously experience cars I could only dream about and learn about ones I never even knew existed. Bugattis, Lambos, Aston Martins, Ferraris, McLarens, Boxsters, Bentleys, Porsches, Jaguars, and so many more that I can’t even think of them all.
Besides the spectacular cars, races, stunts, road trips, and driving, there was the entertainment factor. Top Gear was one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. In addition to the car knowledge, the presenters are performers and comedians in their own right. They made motoring and racing FUN! The interplay and banter between the three presenters was a remarkable chemistry rarely achieved in the realm of TV. Clarkson, May, and Hammond took great joy in insulting, belittling, mocking, arguing with, and making fun of each other at every opportunity, then the next minute they were best friends and teammates. Which left one wondering which was the act and which was the real relationship.
Each had their own endearing personality which the other two used to punch him with. Clarkson was the huge orangutan. May was Captain Slow. And Hammond was the closet American and country dwarf. And let us not forget the Stig. The first time I saw the Stig on the first full episode I watched, I didn’t know what to think of him. Initially I thought he was just a test driver the show used to time laps in cars they tested. Then I learned he/it was a character in his/its own right, one of the most in depth and interesting characters that never speaks on television.
Besides cars a normal person would never get the pleasure of experiencing, the show also went to exotic locations to film. From being the first and so far only people to drive wheeled vehicles to the North Pole, Top Gear also made road trips or specials in such places as the source of the Nile in Africa, Vietnam, the Middle East, the infamous trips to Argentina and the southeastern United States, all over Europe, and even driving from the Amazon rainforest across the Atacama desert to the Pacific Ocean. I became aware of places I never even knew existed, such as the Nurburgring, Lake Como, Italy, and the abandoned Cuidad Real Central Airport in Spain.
The three presenters also built their own version of the Bridge on the River Kwai in Burma. They built their own electric vehicles, built their own ambulances, made their own hovercraft out of a van, made their own stretch limousines out of existing normal-sized cars, made a train out of cars and caravans, even turned a caravan into an airship. More often than not, their efforts ended in colossal and hilarious failure, thus inspiring the Top Gear motto, “Ambitious but Rubbish.” The creative and comedic genius behind the show, its writing, and its production values will never be matched by any other car show, and leaves Top Gear far ahead of most other shows of any type.
With Clarkson as the anchor and May and Hammond as the foundation, Top Gear became not only the most popular motoring show in the world, it became the most popular show on BBC and a cash cow for the network, earning over a billion dollars during its run. Because of all the money Top Gear brought in, the BBC was able to turn a blind eye to, excuse, or ignore the foibles of Clarkson, whose opinionated political incorrectness often infuriated one group or another. Which was also a good reason why so many others liked him and he and the show were such a great success for the network.
I didn’t always agree with some of the things Jeremy did or said. In fact, sometimes he could be a boorish oaf, as can anyone. But overall I liked him. Especially because he didn’t care about being politically correct as defined by the Left and was a stout antagonist of Leftist “Global Warming/Climate Change” hoaxsters, spin masters, and alarmists. On the air, he often made fun of and belittled them and their ludicrous claims. For instance, after driving on ice to the North Pole, he said something to the effect that they shouldn’t even be there because according to the “Global Warming” crowd, there should be no ice and they should all be under water. On another show, he commented about how cold the water was in an English lake, despite the effects of “Global Warming.”
When Bob Geldoff was a guest on the show and scolded him for not being concerned with the environment, Clarkson rebutted with, “I’m aware of the environment. I just don’t care about it.” You gotta love a guy like that who is willing to speak the truth to power and the public and have no fear of the consequences. His “holy trinity” is “oil, gas, and coal.” That statement alone says enough of what he thinks about enviro-fascists and green-freaks.
The supposedly offensive ethnic jokes he often got into hot water for by saying were just that – jokes, meant to be humorous, not taken seriously. Jokes a thousand standup comedians say a thousand times a day in a thousand bars and nobody cares. But with the mass insanity of Liberal-imposed “political correctness” making a mockery of everything in Western culture, offended parties whined and cried and protested to the BBC. Clarkson was warned and reprimanded, but because of the immense popularity of Top Gear and the enormous amount of money it brought in, he kept his job and became even more popular. In later years, though, the patience of the executives at the BBC began to wear thin as they balanced the mutually exclusive concepts of making money with being politically correct to satisfy the Left and its worker drone minions.
The final straw came a couple of weeks ago when Clarkson had a run-in with a Top Gear producer. According to reports and witnesses, after returning the hotel where the cast and crew were staying at about 9:30 PM after a long, hard day of filming, Clarkson became incensed when told that the hotel restaurant was closed and there was no hot food available. Allegedly, he cursed out and berated one of the producers for a good thirty minutes about not having any arrangements for a hot dinner. This public tirade was followed by about thirty seconds of Clarkson physically assaulting the same producer with his fists. This was not the first time Clarkson resorted to using his fists to resolve a dispute. As I said, Jeremy did have his faults. Year earlier, Piers Morgan was on the receiving end. The assault on the producer was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the BBC was concerned. After demurring for about a week, they canned Clarkson and killed Top Gear.
I wonder if this is what Clarkson wanted. He self-reported the incident to his superiors in the BBC, knowing he was already on his final warning and thus very, very thin ice. His victim the producer said nothing. Clarkson seemed happy, content, even smug after he was fired. So it makes me wonder if this was the way he wanted out, the way he wanted to separate from the BBC. Now as a free agent, along with his other two sidekicks, the trio will be free to pursue their own deal. After the popularity of the presenters and Top Gear, not to mention all the money it made for the BBC, any network with any intelligence would snap the three of them up in a heartbeat knowing they already have the foundation for a popular and profitable show just by hiring Clarkson, May, and Hammond.
Though the trio would no longer have access to the Top Gear brand, format, and everything that goes with it, including the Stig, it is the presenters that were the show, along with the exotic cars and the terrible cars, such as the Reliant Robin. And the BBC doesn’t control access to top dreamcars and supercars. So a Clarkson, May, Hammond collaboration, even without the Top Gear theme, would still be smash success to all us Gearheads.
Any attempt to resurrect or continue Top Gear without Clarkson, May, and Hammond is almost certainly doomed to fail. This is evidenced by the spinoff copycat shows the brand made in the US, Australia, and other places. None of them caught on like the original series and were not much more than cheap imitations of the real thing. The BBC must also realize this because I just read that less than two weeks after sacking Clarkson the network has already dismantled the Top Gear set, not wasting any time after getting rid of the man they probably loved to hate. I just have to wonder what they intend to do about replacing all the money Top Gear brought in to fund other shows on the network.
Top Gear ignited in me a burning interest in not only exotic European supercars, but also in British culture, which if not for my love of the show, I would not care about. In fact, after watching so many hours of Top Gear I’ve actually unintentionally adopted some of the peculiarities of British spoken English in my everyday speech.
If not for Top Gear, I would have no reason at all to watch BBC America. Though I only belatedly became aware of and then a huge fan of the show in the last year or two, now that it is history, I will have to content myself with watching reruns of seasons and episodes I have not seen yet. I can already watch the current episodes and those of the last few years that I have seen over and over and over again without getting tired of them, which to me is the mark of a memorable and near-perfect show. That is until, as I hope and am fairly confident of, Clarkson, May, and Hammond land together on some other network with a new car show, whatever that may be called. High Gear? Highest Gear? Over the Top Gear?
In any case, after having experienced the finest motoring show of all time, I’ll forever be both a Petrolhead and a Gearhead. Long live Top Gear! Even in reruns.
Jeff Vanderslice