Will you still watch Top Gear?
You have probably heard that Top Gear presenter, ‘bad lad’ Jeremy Clarkson, has been fired by the BBC. Or, as they put it, they are ‘not renewing his contract’.
If you missed the original story, I wrote about it here.
This popular and controversial presenter was in what was described as ‘fracas’ in a pub (not at work) with another BBC employee.
The latest reports say that he subjected the poor little producer to ‘verbal abuse’ and that there was ‘thirty second’ physical fight. The producer, they say, then drove himself to A & E. (Let’s hope he wasn’t over the limit).
He was ‘shocked and distressed’. Poor baby.
Show me a Yorkshireman, particularly one of Clarkson’s age, who hasn’t used abusive language.Or who hasn’t been in a ‘thirty second fracas’ with another bloke.(Or Yorkshirewoman for that matter).
Will Top Gear be the same without him?
I doubt it. But the BBC have nicely shot themselves in the foot. The BBC’s main competition in the UK, ITV, have found that their shares have leapt in price since the announcement of the sacking. It’s thought he’ll go to work there. And Top Gear is sold to television companies all over the world. It is (or was) a huge money-spinner for the BBC.
Can one million people be wrong?
An online petition calling tgot Clarkson to be reinstated gathered over one million signatures within one week. Shouldn’t the BBC taken just a little notice of that? Doesn’t this mean that one million people agree with Clarkson? That they are pretty fed up with political correctness and prefer Jeremy Clarkson’s down-to-earth approach? Do the BBC not care about their customers? The very people who put bread on their tables? Apparently, the poor little lamb of a producer had a split lip. Read that again, split lip. Not a broken skull. Not even black eye. A split flippin’ lip.
Some time ago, a footballer was convicted of rape. He didn’t lose his job. A couple of years ago, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton sent out a tweet thanking his fans for their support and telling anyone who wasn’t a fan to f*** off. (Except he didn’t use asterisks). He wasn’t fired. Like me, you’ve probably been to office parties where blokes have hd fully-fledged fights (and not a thirty second physical fracas) but they don’t lose their jobs.
Will the other presenters remain?
Co-presenter Richard Hammond described his feelings about the firing of Clarkson by tweeting that he is gutted. Revealingly, the other presenter, James May, who said it was a tragedy, was asked whether Top Gear would carry on. He said, interestingly, that ‘Top Gear existed before us’. So might they leave the programme too?
The BBC say that Clarkson ‘stepped over the mark’. Isn’t this exactly what the BBC has now done itself?
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