by Martin Roach
The next instalment of the new series followed up on the early promise, too. It was almost as if the Top Gear team wanted to give us an opener of pure petrol-head heaven, without all the controversy and quips, but somehow couldn’t resist being a little bit naughty. This time it was two of the world’s economic powerhouses in the firing line: America and China.
Richard Hammond is a huge fan of NASCAR and so the boys sent him off to America to film a feature on the hugely popular motorsport, which despite being ostensibly a batch of cars going round in circles for hundreds of laps, still manages to attract upward of 250,000 people to each race. Is it better than F1? Well, that was what Hammond was sent out to prove. (Previously in the 2010 Christmas Special, the trio had ‘invented’ Old Testament NASCAR after romping around a sandy circuit inside a 2,000-year-old chariot stadium.)
NASCARs are 900bhp of brutally raw power, with no electrical aids, not even a fuel gauge, so in essence they are the polar opposite of the space-age technology found in F1 vehicles. Hammond revels in this purity and at the event he was chosen to drive the parade car for the running start to the race; later, he even drove a few laps at full pelt himself, albeit with only one other car alongside him.
The real fun in this second episode of the 18th series came with the sense that James May and Jeremy Clarkson were increasingly unable to keep their famously risqué humour at bay. Cue several jokes at the expense of the USA, including references to fat people, pronouncing ‘aluminium’ wrong and World Wars. They are, according to Jeremy, a nation that is apparently ‘easily amused’ and capable of turning dreary sports into spectator festivals. With no small dash of irony, that week’s Star in a Reasonably Priced Car was American actor Matt LeBlanc from Friends, who proceeded to post the fastest lap ever at 1.42.1, a tenth of a second faster than the previous record holder, Series 17’s Rowan Atkinson.
After a brief flurry of politically incorrect news – including Clarkson making a gag about the Elephant Man complete with his version of John Merrick’s heavily impeded speech – the show moved swiftly to the Far East. While Hammond had been mixing with rednecks and ‘putting cheese on everything’, May and Clarkson travelled to China to discover if that country actually made good modern cars. Seemingly not, according to the duo.
The opening salvo was a gag about Chairman Mao and a buffalo. However, after this cheeky start and as suggested by Andy Wilman in The Sunday Times, there was a very noticeable delivery of cold, hard facts in this feature – cut-away shots of the two presenters rattling off stats, such as China selling 38,000 new cars a day, etc. But yet again the real fun was when the comedy kicked in. At the race track, The Stig’s Chinese cousin smashed through a door and proceeded to attack both presenters and crew with a flurry of martial arts moves (The Stig’s Italian cousin had made an appearance at Imola the week before). ‘Attack Stig’, as he was christened, could only just be penned into the car and even stopped halfway around one lap to kung-fu kick a steward (at the end of the piece, Attack Stig lunged at May and kicked him in the testicles). May and Clarkson weren’t done with their opinions either, implying Chinese crash tests were ludicrously lax and making the point that counterfeiting was rife in the country, including in the car industry, where ‘lookalike’ models of Western vehicles were commonplace. And according to Clarkson, most Chinese cars only have to have enough headroom for someone who is 5’3”. The show closed with three Chinese Top Gear imposters back in the studio saying they were coming to take over the West’s car industry. So, America and China lambasted in the same 60-minute slot. Top Gear was back on form! I myself knew the show was back to its best because the morning after the second episode, I checked the news channels to see who had complained about what.
In fact, quite the opposite happened late in February 2012, when the TV watchdog Ofcom cleared Jeremy Clarkson of breaking broadcasting rules over his infamous ‘strikers’ comments before Christmas. They said the remarks, while ‘potentially offensive’ were justified by the context but were unlikely to encourage viewers ‘to act on them in any way’. They added that viewers would expect Clarkson to be controversial due to his ‘well-established public persona’ and that ‘his comments were not an expression of seriously held beliefs,’ going on to point out that The One Show had ended that particular programme with an apology. By Series 18, the trio were even relaxed enough to make light-hearted references to the controversy during one particular show’s ‘News’ piece about people who make fraudulent insurance claims for whiplash.
The forthcoming series shows no signs of losing the momentum that the scintillating opening episodes injected back into Top Gear. Ludicrous but unmissable highlights include an attempt to film a car chase for the re-make of The Sweeney and trips to the frozen landscape of Sweden to test drive a – what else? – Ferrari FF and a new Bentley, of course! And Richard fires up a rally car in a race to the finish with a man in a flying suit.
It was important to note the deliberate tactic that producer Wilman had highlighted: the new series was far more factually informative than the show had been of late, essentially in recognition that petrol-heads may enjoy the thrills and spills of a madcap test drive or ‘special’ show, but at the root of their penchant for tuning in is a fascination with cars (as I have mentioned so frequently in this book). Otherwise the programme is just a series of comic sketches. Thankfully, Top Gear haven’t overdone this more practical approach in Series 18 and turned the programme into some kind of University Challenge for car freaks; despite the more serious approach to some factual parts of the show, they still revel in ensuring that every episode has, as Wilman puts it, ‘a drizzle of nonsense’.
CHAPTER 24
The Best Job In The World!
As we have seen, between 2009 and 2011, there was a fair barrage of criticism aimed at Top Gear, with several media critics suggesting the long-serving motoring show was perhaps finally running out of steam. There were suggestions that the famous banter between the presenters had grown too forced and scripted – something they vehemently denied – and that the features were becoming either ludicrous or predictable. Fortunately, the brilliant Series 18 defied all the naysayers but nonetheless some of the core challenges for Clarkson and his colleagues remain.
It seems that the producers and presenters of the new Top Gear are sometimes damned if they do and damned if they don’t. After originally eschewing the old format of fairly serious reviews and magazine pieces, the latest version of Top Gear took on board ever more madcap stunts and odd challenges with gusto, but as the years have passed this approach has increasingly attracted more and more criticism, with detractors accusing them of veering away from being a car programme and simply evolving into a straight entertainment show. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, surely?
Top Gear is nothing if not self-aware. For example, in one show during Series 6, the trio apologised for the previous week’s ‘boring’ reviews of Cabriolets and Chevrolets in Iceland and said they’d decided to go back there and film something far more exciting. What could be less dull than Hammond taking a seat in a bonkers 1,000bhp Icelandic off-road jeep? This insane vehicle was normally used for driving (literally) up cliff faces, but here, it was turned to driving across a lake instead, hoping to rely on its huge tyre grips to provide buoyancy. The task needed a constant nitrous oxide injection, which was successfully achieved – no mean feat of engineering that. Richard then went in with a champion jeep driver who, incredibly, succeeded in racing the vehicle across the surface of the lake without it sinking. The point of mentioning this small clip is that it’s a classic example of Top Gear being aware of its own pitfalls and reacting quickly to remedy any valid criticism.
When they do find themselves with no choice but to review a ‘boring’ car, however, they will inevitably spice up the test with all sorts of insane challenges. As inferred earlier in this book and picking up on a point Andy Wilman himself has made, the art of car design is so honed in the 21st century that a majority of commonplace
cars are very solidly built, well designed, cleverly thought out, and to be frank, unlikely to attract a terrible review.
A great example of a ‘non-review’ of a car was in Series 11, when they tested the Daihatsu Terios. This was a compact 4x4 that had won various awards, including ‘4x4 of the Year’ by 4x4 Magazine. It had decent performance for its 1.5 litre engine, superb economy and cost only £75 a year to tax, due to its low emissions. Though it boasted a spacious interior, it was shorter than a VW Golf, with lots of extras as standard, even offering reverse parking sensors on all models, and yours for about £14,000.
There’s not much you can say about a car that ticks so many boxes in certain areas. So, Top Gear’s approach was simple: don’t say anything. Clarkson instead had the livery painted in faux fox fur and took the little 4x4 out into the country for a spot of hunting. Or rather, being hunted. With a small rag soaked in fox urine attached to a rope on the bumper, the Terios was then chased by a pack of salivating foxhounds around the English countryside, followed closely by the huntsmen and, some way back, Richard Hammond, teetering about on a horse and trying his best not to fall off.
In the whole test, Clarkson barely mentioned the actual car or its performance. The most obvious statistic was the 0–60 time he offered but otherwise the piece was all about not being caught by the hungry hounds or moaning ramblers. ‘If anybody does have an objection to what we are doing here,’ said Clarkson, as he ploughed through a hedge and pleasantly wooded glade, ‘do please feel free to keep that objection to yourself!’ In his defence, he did get out of the car to shut a gate after himself at one point. Oh, and he also said the car was lighter than a buttercup and that the ride was bumpy, but to be fair, this was said as he was hurtling across a ploughed field. The strange – and clever – part of the test is that the viewer comes away thinking the Terios is actually a cracking little car.
There is another theory expounded by critics about the show’s shelf-life. The trio of presenters’ ‘every man’ personas mean you really relate to their view on a car. When Clarkson gets out of a Lotus Elise and points out his belly is a bit heavy to get out with any style, you feel for him and understand the point he is making. And when Hammond drives a Porsche with child-like enthusiasm around the power track, even though most viewers could get nowhere near his lap time, somehow you know that’s how you would feel driving it. It’s like your mates down the pub trying out all these fast cars and filming it – and that’s a big reason why Top Gear works.
Critics say therein lies a possible time-bomb for the successful formula: the three presenters have (rightly) become very well-known and extremely well paid, so apart from their interest in cars, they really don’t bear much resemblance to ‘the man on the street’ anymore. Therefore, like legions of rock stars before them, will they start to ‘lose touch’ with their core audience? I don’t believe they will, but to be objective you have to accept it’s a possibility. It’s an analogy that has been thrown at Top Gear more than once – that of a visceral, exciting grass-roots phenomenon that becomes massive over the years but in so doing loses contact with the reasons why it became popular in the first place. And it’s the same for the millionaire rock star whose first album was bedsit poetry but finds it hard to write the same quality of material sitting in his multi-million pound crib. Each presenter now has a beautiful home, boy toys galore, solo projects such as books and TV shows, fame, money and all the trimmings.
Reassuringly, when viewers’ comments citing several of these criticisms were aired on the Points of View programme, the Controller of BBC2, Janice Hadlow, rejected them and backed the show fully. Wilman and Clarkson, ever the realists but also perennially confident of their show’s uniqueness, have not overreacted to the recent criticism. Writing on his fascinating blog, Andy Wilman has suggested this incarnation of Top Gear is ‘nearer the end than the beginning.’ He explained that although they felt they had recently produced some good features, they also felt rushed and had been exhausted for long periods of time during some of the latter shows. Notably, the ratings for the 2009 series were down, too – although at five million, they were still superb for BBC2. This may simply have been due to the time slot moving later to 9pm to avoid clashing with ITV’s X Factor.
Wilman also revealed that when they had filmed a feature on Lancias, they had all experienced what he phrased as a ‘wake-up call’ in that they felt they were getting back some of the original spirit of the show before its exponential success. Wilman’s blog closed by saying that if there was to be an inevitable end, ‘our job is to land this plane with its dignity still intact.’ ‘It will end,’ Wilman told the Guardian, ‘because we are a one-trick pony, as all good shows are, and at some point we will run out of ideas or the public will go, “We’ve got the point now.”’
Controversy and Top Gear go hand in hand, that much is clear. If there comes a time when stunts, fast cars, provocative comments and high-speed jinx become old-fashioned and fall out of vogue, then the programme is done for. Should it change and dilute these staple ingredients to curry favour, however, it would no longer be Top Gear.
But if the current Top Gear line-up might be heading towards its Indian summer before retiring off into the pit lane of TV motor shows, what’s next around the corner? James May already has plans: ‘The discussion I have with Jeremy is that one day we’ll have a pub,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I’m quite interested in beer, Jeremy likes wine, we both like eating, so when we stop doing the show we’re going to have a Top Gear pub. Not as a branding exercise where you turn up occasionally like Gordon Ramsay – this would actually be us serving you, all the time: beer, wine, pies, fish-finger sandwiches. We’d live upstairs.’
However, any whispers that Top Gear is past its prime are ill-founded. At the time of writing, the series remains one of the world’s most-watched television programmes. Baywatch-esque, it has expanded across the globe and conservative estimates now confirm that a staggering 350 million do indeed watch each episode. It is rumoured to be the most-pirated TV show on earth. YouTube clips regularly attract millions of viewers, there are multiple translated versions and it is broadcast in territories as far-flung as Australia and Latin America. To date, however, there are just three ‘international’ versions, namely shows completely re-made for an overseas market: Russia, Australia and America. The Australian version was run by Channel Nine, who won the rights after a competitive bidding process that reflected the popularity of the show Down Under (the channel’s parent company was publisher of Top Gear magazine in that territory, too). Indeed, in 2008, a joint venture between Jeremy Clarkson, Andy Wilman and the BBC was structured, which meant both presenter and producer were now more formally part of the vast empire.
In the UK too, there have been permutations of the Top Gear formula, albeit for charity. Top Gear has helped Comic and Sport Relief on three occasions to date: Stars in Fast Cars in 2005 came first, then Top Gear of the Pops (2007), with appearances by Lethal Bizzle, Travis, Supergrass and McFly, who were asked to write a song including the words ‘sofa’, ‘administration’ and ‘Hyundai’. Richard Hammond played his trusty bass and performed alongside Justin Hawkins of The Darkness fame, singing a passable version of Billy Ocean’s ‘Red Light Spells Danger’. Finally, they filmed the 2008 special, Top Ground Gear Force for Sport Relief, with ‘new’ gardening presenters ‘Alan Clarkmarsh’, ‘Handy Hammond’ and ‘Jamesy Dimmock May’ all teaming up to butcher Olympian Steve Redgrave’s garden.
So, it’s an international show that has created a global media empire. Viewers have witnessed some of the most challenging, hilarious, dangerous, unique and mind-boggling stunts, races, tests and treks that modern TV has ever seen. Is this what makes Top Gear such a success? Of course, there have been a number of competitive motoring shows on TV: notably Channel 4’s Driven, ITV’s Pulling Power, Granada’s Vroom Vroom and BBC World’s India’s Wheels. And then there’s the motorsport reality show, Roary The Racing Car. But it’s Top Gear that easily rules t
he roost and why is that?
At the start of this book, I suggest that the allure of the motorcar is a major factor in the show’s appeal. And so it is. Also, the team attempt stunts and feats that no right-minded person would ever try and this mixes in a little Vaudeville suspense with the factual analysis. But having reviewed the brilliant TV that the Top Gear team have been making for all these years, there’s one over-riding and potently important factor: the chemistry of the three presenters is arguably the magic ingredient. Other motoring shows perform stunts, too, and also have similar challenges, journeys, and so on but no one else has Jezza, Captain Slow and The Hamster himself. As Simon Cowell might say, that’s the X factor. F1 legend David Coulthard agrees: ‘They are incredible TV personalities, who have mastered the art of comic timing. Even when the dialogue is quite clearly scripted, they perfect the timing; add to that the fact that they are clearly very knowledgeable presenters, then it all makes for a brilliant show. I actually can’t watch most shows on repeat, but I’ll happily sit there and watch Top Gear on [satellite channel] Dave. I think the viewer can identify with them because although at times they are acting, they are only really acting themselves and they are doing that in a very journalistic way that’s very interesting to watch. I think what they do takes a great deal of skill: to be able to handle a TV presentation like that, to be so knowledgeable in your chosen field and master the comedy, too.’
Part of the appeal of the trio’s chemistry is that it strips back their, no-doubt, more complex off-screen characteristics into cartoonish caricatures. Perhaps that’s why the show has increasingly attracted both old and young to its ratings. Certainly, my eldest loves to deride Captain Slow for driving old posh cars at a snail’s pace while also saying The Hamster will dare to try anything once – all in the same eight-year-old breath as laughing at Spongebob and trying out exercises by Sporticus. To him, they are effectively from the same cartoonist’s brush. Wilman himself has joked that TG’s viewers are either school boys or prisoners!