Now your correspondent has, on varied occasions in the recent past (including as recent as a half hour ago), been accused of spending his TV watching hours watching nothing but sport on the holy crystal bucket. This is patently, slanderously untrue. I also watch Top Gear. And one of my most prized possessions, as some of you will be aware, is a T-shirt which declares the following to the world:
Which, sadly, is also patently and slanderously untrue. Sorry folks, but if you were really looking for a legitimate candidate for the most infamous test driving role on international television, you probably wouldn't pick someone who got his licence the day Ayrton Senna got a suspension upright through his bonce and who hasn't driven what the Septics call a 'stick' in about 12 years.
The Stig, of course, is the mysterious silhouetted test driver on the latest reincarnation of Top Gear, whose identity is kept as secret as the location of Jeremy Clarkson's illicit stash of spray-on hairpaint. (You've missing a spot, Jezza.) And by the blank looks on the faces of those who had to ask that question, I can tell we actually have some ladies in the audience tonight.Yeah, sure, that sounds like flippant sexism - because it is - but it's also true. I have owned the above T-shirt for a month as of yesterday. I have been asked 'Who is the Stig?' by approximately ten people. None of them were male. And for every furrowed feminine brow there has been four times as many fullahs with knowing grins, nods, or comments like Great shirt", "Isn't it Nigel Mansell?" or, less helpfully, "I figured you'd be less fat." The International Olympic Committee could save a lot of time, expense and embarrassment by replacing their genetic gender test for certain 'delicate' sporting situations (eg women's weightlifting or men's gymnastics) by Jacques Rogge or Dick Pound turning up in an 'I Am The Stig' shirt and studying the faces. Sure, it's about as scientific as Scientology but it's better than a kick in the gronniks. Which is the other option under consideration, coincidentally. Probably would work reasonably well also.
Random aside: only one Olympian has managed to avoid undergoing the compulsory genetic test for gender (basically a chromosomal spread to count the X's and Y's) and still managed to compete in their chosen event. Unsurprisingly this was Princess Anne in Montreal 1974. Unsurprisingly as she is actually a horse.
But back to our question of the day: if I'm not the Stig (which would apparently seem to be the case), who the fuck is?
A simple question, you'd think, but one which spotty nerds right across the interweb have been flaming each other over for years. Some history. Top Gear started in the 1980s and by the turn of the century was looking like a pretty sad old nail. Clarkson had buggered off in the late '90s to make the most of the rest of his hair, and the hacks who were left pedalling the rickshaw were a bit average at best. Check them out on the rival Fifth Gear show if you want to see exactly what was wrong with 'old' Top Gear - cheap, sterile and more awkward than a half-mongrel at a funeral. The reason they're there is that the entire presenting staff of old Top Gear moved over to UK Channel 5 after the BBC cancelled the show in 2002. Only to reconsider about five minutes later, write Clarkson a big fuck-off cheque and start over again with decent production values for a change (just look at the budget for Hammond's teeth).
The Stig was 'new' Top Gear's resident test driver, named after just about every heroically loony Scandinavian rally driver ever (though Clarkson tediously maintains it's something to do with what they called newbies at the school he went to), clad all in black, stoically silent and hideously quick. And nobody knew who he was. Until slaphead Brit race driver Perry McCarthy, who briefly drove for the worst Formula One team in the history of the sport, Andrea Moda Formula (run by an Italian shoe designer and kicked out of F1 midway through their first and only season for 'bringing the sport into disrepute') opened his big mouth in his autobiography Flat Out, Flat Broke and 'fessed up to being The Man In Black. Actually he boasted about it rather loudly, in point of fact. In a calm, measured response the producers of Top Gear killed off 'Black' Stig in the first episode of the next series by catapulting him off an aircraft carrier in a Jaguar XJS. His replacement, 'white' Stig, remains in the job to this day, thanks to his bravery, talent, driver training skills, and not least of all, his ability to keep his fucking trap shut.But the question remains, who IS this bastard?
Hmmm. Nice idea, but probably not.
Well, let's look at the evidence. He's effing quick, as Frank Williams would have put it. Quick enough to match F1 driver pace around Top Gear's airfield circuit. There's the red herrings - Damon Hill refusing to deny he was the Stig while on the show; Clarkson making a big deal of Nigel Mansell not only matching the Stig's track time to the tenth of a second, but using the same quasi-bizarro entry line into the first turn; Mark Webber being told not to wear his nice new 'I Am The Stig' shirt around the F1 paddock in case Schumacher got pissed off - 'he doesn't always wear red' - and so on.
Gis me shirt back Webber ya fuggen Queanbeyan booner*
*Canberran for bogan
But you just know it's some anonymous, unknown, faceless hack. Some guy who noone's heard of, probably British, probably plying his trade in sportscars or touring cars or something, who's never driven in F1. In fact, finding out the Stig's identity would probably be a fairly massive anti-climax.
Or at least it was for me. Which is why I'm not going to tell you who it is.
Yes, I do know who the Stig is. It's this guy. (Don't look if you don't want to find out; in hindsight, it's probably more fun not knowing.) David Sears, the Brit who runs the New Zealand and German A1GP teams, was interviewed a few months back on a fairly irreverant Kiwi motorsport show called Pitlane when the A1GP cars were over here, and was more than happy to answer The Big Question: "Oh, you want to know who the Stig is... it's [name deleted], he's a British sportscar driver. He used to drive sportscars for me."
So there it is. Not Nigel, not Damon, and certainly not fucking Michael.
Unless, of course, David Sears has been shoulder-tapped by the TG production team to spread some disinformation. In which case everything I just said could be complete bollocks. And you know what that means...
I just might be the Stig after all.
The Doctor is OUT.
