1st post!
I’ve recently seen a few episodes of Top Gear - the British car-reviewing show. Not being into cars, I was surprised by how much I liked the show. The reason for this being the very engaging presenters, especially Jeremy Clarkson.
More recently though, and in two episodes in particular, he comes off as a bit of a flag-waving idiot. Is this his actual personality or a Colbert-like parody?
He has no love for the UK government either.
It’s not a parody as much as a comic exaggeration of the real him. He gets a lot of mileage out of robustly asserting unfashionably reactionary views and cultural stereotypes about damn foreigners. It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek and I doubt that he sees himself as some great satirist or social commentator. It’s not supposed to be that clever.
Anyway, welcome and glad you (mostly) enjoy the show!
And I would say it is real. He’s very opinionated and gets in trouble for it, as his Wikipedia article shows:
Also, it’s a UK show. Making fun of the Americans is like US shows making fun of the French.
Although he has some strong views, a lot of what he says is loaded with irony or exagerated for the sake of entertainment.
Bill O’Reilly, I assume, is exactly like he appears. I rarely see any sign of irony or caricature in his presentation.
Additionally, Jeremy Clarkson is a very nice man!
No, really; Usram has nailed it. All the wiki article shows is what happens if humourless people take umbrage at tongue-in-cheek things (I’m not referring to you :)). I’m not saying he’s a great humourist or anything (far from it), but being taken seriously is the very last thing he expects.
Or a UK show making fun of the French. Or Belgians. Or themselves, or whomever, really. Whatever they do is only a daft excuse to hang some stupid stunt off; it’s a bit bizarre really from a UK perspective that anyone might actually pay attention to what they’re saying. I mean, on this week’s show they strapped a Robin Reliant to a rocket and tried to launch it in to space. How this sort of thing is getting compared to a political demagogue with no apparent sense of fun whatsoever is a bit confusing. 
I have nothing to add to the OP, but I just wanted to say that this was* fucking brilliant*. The look on Hammond and May’s faces when it didn’t detach!
I was reading another board apparently frequented by people who work at NASA, and they were saying that that video clip was doing the rounds at Kennedy Space Center yesterday. The KSC people were impressed by the smooth, controlled ascent.
Clarkson started out as a motoring journalist, and wrote columns which started out as faiurly dull and worthy, but gradually became a bit more reactionary. The reactionary views proved more popular, and he has now plays it for laughs. You’re not supposed to take him seriously. (Excpet the bits about caravans. He really does hate them.)
Youtube link to the ascent and the, er, subsequent descent (liftoff @07:20)
Two things. First…that rocket flight was AWESOME! I genuinely feel that it could have worked! For those of you who haven’t seen it, they strap a car on the largest rocket I’ve ever seen built (excluding space agencies, of course). You have to see it. Although I do admit, 3000 feet is a lot lower than it sounds. I just couldn’t believe it was real until I saw it actually light up! They even had the liquid fuel running through rockets in the car. Although a real landing wold have been great, what happened wasn’t bad either.
As far as clarkson goes, he’s no Bill O’Reilly (sp?). Clarkson plays his prejudices for laughs. His response to the left wing is based on what I’d probably call libertarian principles and he uses mockery to get his point across. It comes off as being funny and not completely sincere. He generally has this over-the-top attitude towards almost anything he has an opinion about.
Bill O’Reilly on the other hand…Well, I’d say that his opposition to the left comes mainly from a mostly social conservative point of view. He’s worried about Christmas being replaced by Holidays, etc. And he takes himself very seriously on his show.
Ha!
“How are we going to use it again?!”
was priceless!
-FrL-
Jeremy Clarkson is really smart and funny. One of my favorite guests on QI.