Done like a dinner

Indeed, news broke overnight that motoring presenter and ridiculous flog Jeremy Clarkson had been relieved of his high-paying gig at the British Broadcasting Corporation, despite staunch support of a noisy minority of munters, bigots and fuckwits, in particular JC's BFF David Cameron. Not to mention his 11 year old daughter who is reported to be on a hunger strike until Clarkson is reinstated, or until Daddy buys her another pony. Her reaction to the news of old mate quitting 1D was not available at press time.

Firing Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear is a frightening precedent for all of us who like to punch ppl in the face while throwing a tantrum
— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) March 25, 2015

In the realm of great Pyrrhic tantrums of the recent past, Clarkson's is immense; that of his erstwhile offsiders May and Hammond, refusing to do the show unless the pube-headed waxworks reject was reinstated, is similarly pointless and self-defeating. Both have slightly rescinded the rhetoric today, and both will find gigs easy enough to come by (as both are excellent camera talent and genuinely likeable), but Top Gear - at least this iteration of it - needs to die along with Clarkson's taxpayer-funded career.

This would be a tremendous point at which to put the screens up around @BBC_TopGear and put it to sleep. It's time.
— Dr Yobbo (@DrYobbo) March 19, 2015

This. (Yes, I'm agreeing with myself. Someone has to.) Not just because Clarkson is a dreadful arse, a boorish, bigoted, climate-denialist Tory bully masquerading as an anti-Establishment rebel while being a card-carrying member thereof... though there is that. No, because the experience of the various international Top Gears has proven that the only thing preventing TG from being Just Another Car Show (as May observed in his comments today) is the repartee between the presenters. It's the only reason the show works at all. Airdropping the inveterately twatty Chris Evans of Radio One into proceedings to replace Clarkson will work about as well as when the Australian producers tried the same with some random trumpet player. Although Alan Partridge would be an interesting wrinkle.

@DrYobbo I keep meaning to tell you and forgetting: I watched through all of Top Gear, and sometimes Jeremy Clarkson reminds me of you.
— Melissa Dunphy (@mormolyke) April 19, 2012

Ohhh get faaaarrrrkked.

Clarkson, of course, will be fine; untempered by the modulation of May and Hammond, he'll get to make as many terrible fucking vanity DVDs as the market can stand, featuring him overrevving hypercar unobtania around cracked runway tarmac like a monumental bellend while gurning 'POWEERRRRR' at a GoPro; pen a regular race-baiting column for the Torygraph; run for fucking parliament in the safe Conservative seat of Jumping-Over-Shark. He won't just fuck off somewhere and shut up. More's the pity.

IMO, they should bin the lot of it - presenters, format, executive producer - and give the show over to actual car guys and Fifth Gear (the show recycled from the ruins of Old Top Gear in the earlty Oughts) alumni Tom Ford and Jonny Smith, recently returned to the Beeb for Mud Sweat and Gears. Gritty reboot or GTFO. Otherwise, TG is all played out. Old white men arguing about cars on taxpayer funded overseas junkets ain't getting it done in 2015.

Still, it's kinda sad. See, I liked Top Gear. No, that's too dilute. For a decade, Top Gear has been the only show I consistently watched (or DVR'd) on free to air network television. For all Clarkson's fuckwittery, his character was necessary for the show to work in the three-handed character-driven context it dwelt within. And even if this required anyone with a brain to suspend disbelief and convince themselves that he was intended by the producers as a satire of the grunting right-wing reactionary flog he played on television, it worked as far as that device was capable of taking it.

Although binning Clarkson was clearly the right move for all manner of reasons, the temptation will be for the BBC to look for a like-for-like replacement to keep the TG cash farm rolling. Even though this Clarkson's clearly broken, they could just go out and get a new one.




The Doctor is OUT.