Clarkson has commented on his career prospects, speaking at a charity event where he was auctioning a chance to drive round the Top Gear track with him:
No, Jeremy. No. *You *fucked it up. Remember when you punched a junior employee in the face to indicate your dissatisfaction with the available menu? That was the point at which you fucked it up.
The only thing the BBC fucked up was in allowing him to wallow in the delusion that actions don’t have consequences.
Since you appear to have intimate knowledge on the incident, maybe you were actually there, do give us a clear - blow-by-blow if you will- account of the fracas.
I only know what’s been reported:
You are free to draw your own conclusions from this, or to withhold judgement as you see fit. I’d be interested to hear what, if anything, you think might have happened. If there’s anything wrong in the above, or anything I’ve missed, I’d be happy to hear it. It might change my mind. In the meantime, I’ve drawn my own conclusions from the above.
I should say, if it turns out I’m wrong I will come back here and say I was…
It’s interesting to note what Clarkson’s close friend AA Gill wrote about the incident:
So from an account presumably favourable to Clarkson, we learn that:
There *was *an incident; It *was *over food; Clarkson felt he needed to apologise; Clarkson admits he lost his temper; There’s no denial of the punch.
Make of that what you will.
Well we’ll see. If it was a horrendous incident he’ll have to take what’s coming to him. If it was “handbags” in the heat of the moment then I’d be less bothered, these things happen.
The BBC continue to employ Roy Keane and he…by his own admission…tried purposefully to break the leg and end the career of another player. Not in the heat of the moment but as an act of cold, calculating brutality.
The Clarkson incident, even if true as reported, is small beer compared to that.
The stig is asexual. The whole gag is that it’s not really a person, it’s just some sort of racing driver automaton. The stig shows no personality by nature, and really there should be no way to even tell what sex the stig is anyway underneath that suit. What benefit would having a female play something whose defining trait is the lack of personality? It would be extremely gimmicky and pointless.
That said, whoever the Stig is is a legit top tier former racing driver, right? Then it’s unlikely that there’s a woman in the world qualified to be the stig. You’d have to throw out previous lap times and stop comparing them because the performance wouldn’t be there.
Sounds to me like he was hungry, tired and grouchy, and acted like an ass. Although hardly admirable, these things happen. He apparently apologized to the producer as well as his employer. In today’s litigious, hyper-sensitive society, the employer played it safe by canning him. They probably have the right to do so, but probably not the obligation. BBC’s reaction strikes me as the politically-correct, hand-wringing reaction of a bureaucracy worried about appearance and litigation.
I’m hardly brushing aside the incident, but I’m also not over-blowing it. In the olden days, stars certainly did a lot worse and were not only forgiven, but the incidents were covered up and/or denied. BBC looks like the PC weenie to me. But perhaps it’s part of contract negotiations if indeed Clarkson, May and Hammond’s contracts are up.
Apparently May and Hammond refused to do the rest of the season without Clarkson. And their contracts with the BBC are all up this year. So it seems like there’s a decent chance they might branch off into a new show, which seems like the best case scenario in this instance.
I heard something about that. Odd, considering how many times they’ve talked about leaving a man behind if his car should break down on the road (and even done it a few times).
Not just this year, but at the end of this month (per the OP’s link).
You have to differentiate between their onscreen personas and the actual people.
And remember that the “man left behind” is still on camera. So there’s a film crew about twenty feet away.
But it changes from “he’s an entitled ass who punched a lower level guy” to “a guy snapped after a horrible day, self-reported the incident, and tried to make ammends”.
If, hypothetically, Clarkson, May and Hammond moved to another network, how much of the show could they bring with them? Presumably elements like Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, the Stig and so forth are property of the BBC. So they would need to develop new segments. I imagine it would be about a year before any new show was ready for air.
Accodring to one story on The Independent website:
Isn’t that the plot of an episode of Fawlty Towers?
Okay, now things are just getting weird.
Indeed. You can get a hint at how they feel about each other here, the intro to the episode when Richard Hammond returns after his near-fatal crash. I can’t seem to find it on the interwebz, but while they are talking about the wreck May and Clarkson mention how scared and upset they were visiting Hammond in the hospital, and how relieved they are that he’s okay; they seemed to be talking from the heart, then.
I’m not sure which is stranger – that there’s a rent-a-tank service in London, or that they’ll let you drive it on the streets up to the gates of the BBC. At the very least, there must be a swingeing congestion charge.
Well what else could matter more to British society than the fate of their favorite car review show?