Bottle Of (Top) Gear
“YOU’RE A *!@X DRIVER – Clarkson’s hospital gag gets Hammond smiling,” says the Sun’s front page.
And we too smile. Cancel the minute’s silence. And call off the synchronised mass revving of engines and speed camera flash. TV presenter Richard Hammond is alive.
The paper says that Jeremy Clarkson, who co-hosts BBC TV’s Top Gear show, managed to find the right word for the moment and called his mate a “crap driver”. “It was an amazing moment, very moving,” says Jeremy.
But it was not entirely unexpected that one day Hammond would have an accident. And the Sun spots a posting on the Top Gear website. It reads: “No series of Top Gear would be complete without an earnest attempt to kill Richard Hammond.”
Though written back in November, the words have “outraged” Hammond fans who have demanded that it be taken down.
And we wonder what dark forces are at work at the BBC. As we have noted, Hammond is alive, and retains his sense of humour. But was someone planning an accident in Hammond’s car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for…
It’s all too familiar. We have been here before. And chilled to the bone, we delve further into the matter. And alongside a piece on the BBC’s website about drivers in sub-zero temperatures, we read: “We just wanted to see what happened when a TV presenter’s head snaps off.”
Was there a plot to off “The boy racer who became an unlikely star” (Express)? And in light of this accident, should Top Gear be axed?
The Mail asks just such a question. But it cannot debate the matter alone and solicits a certain Neil Lyndon (“YES”) to call the show “adolescent, lawbreaking recklessness” and Martin Newland (“NO”) to say that “the success of Top Gear lies in its defence of the Middle England, law-abiding motorists.”
This is all interesting stuff, not least of all to the millions of us who thought it was just a programme about middle-aged men messing around in cars, a kind of Three Men In A Company Saloon.
But accident or not, as the Mirror’s front page says: “We’re all praying for you, Hamster.”
In silence…
Posted: 22nd, September 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
