A long time ago, the BBC used to have a show about cars called 'Top Gear'. It was a magazine format programme that covered many different subjects that might be of interest to the average motorist - changes to motoring legislation, reviews of new cars, and so forth. In short, it was primarily concerned with cars, the driving of said cars and all things motoring-related. Fairly straightforward. Somewhere along the way, however, this motoring show morphed into an 'entertainment' brand. The focus became less about seeing the motorist as a consumer and more about entertaining the public with items that were often, at best, fairly tangentially-linked to motoring. In this new model of 'Top Gear, when a car was 'reviewed', it would invariably be a £100K and upwards sports car that was being chucked around twisty roads or photograhed against clouded skies to create an image of brooding power, the curves of wheel arches and sharp creases along the flanks highlighted to emphasise the sexiness of these unattainable beasts. Basically, these 'reviews' became petrolhead porn items. Along with this, the three presenters became hugely successful at (in their own words) being paid lots of money for cocking about. They went on trips to exotic lands to drive cars and 'cock about', not really informative about the cars or the countries, but 'entertaining'. To top it all off, 'Top Gear' was loved abroad even more than it is here in the UK being sold to over 200 television territories around the world and making the BBC a tidy penny or two.
However, this sunny picture is not without dark clouds. Over the years, the main presenter of 'Top Gear', Jeremy Clarkson, has managed to insert his foot in his mouth on numerous occasions and has earned himself several reprimands. The most recent examples were characterising lorry drivers as prostitute murderers and Mexicans as feckless, work-shy poncho-wearers, slyly using the term 'slope' when referring to an Asian person and the one that earned him (supposedly) a final warning, the use of the 'n' word caught on tape. Hence, when Jeremy was reportedly involved in a 'fracas' with his producer, the BBC was left with pretty much no option but to suspend him while they investigate the matter and, presumably, contemplate his future. As the news of his suspension leaked out, the Twittersphere predictably split into two camps: "Thank God, he may finally be going! Deserves everything he gets" and "No! Bring back Jezza! The only decent programme on TV. It's just PC gone mad!". The split seemed (in the main) to follow party political lines with UKIP/libertarians championing Jeremy as a bastion of free speech and common sense while the liberal/left see him as an unreconstructed dinosaur, a boorish oaf spouting views from the 1970s.
Okay, full disclosure here. I am not a fan of 'Top Gear" and I am certainly not a fan of Mr Clarkson. I used to like the programme back in the day when it told me something about cars rather than telling me rather too much about its presenters. Rather like there had to be a cull of the old Radio 1 DJs like DLT because they were deemed to have got too cosy and spent most of their air time telling us about life on their farms or the fetes they had opened, so 'Top Gear' is now mainly about the presenters. We learn more about their preferences and prejudices than we ever learn about Ford's latest release or what the best buy is for under £15K. I see the need for a programme to be entertaining but where has the 'informing' element gone? Make a programme called 'Middle-aged Guys Cock About' and sell that to the world, but give us some journalism related to cars, please! Mr Clarkson, I have never particularly liked. I cannot say with absolute certainty, but I suspect his politics lie somewhere to the right of mine (if not to the right of Ghengis Khan's). His attitude that everything the goverment does in relation to motoring is invariably about taking the fun out of motoring may have some value but I think he overplays it. I realise he is a columnist in a couple of newspapers and is paid to be a little outrageous and to be provocative, so some of what he does is about playing to the gallery although I think he really is pretty old-school in his views. All my dislikes aside, they are not the reason why it is a good thing that the BBC has finally taken some action.
I can choose not to listen to Mr Clarkson's views on 'anti-motorist' legislation, choose not to watch him and his chums 'cock about' in foreign climes, choose not to see another review of a supercar I will never own. I can do this by not watching 'Top Gear'. However, expressing your libertarian views on motoring laws is very different to using racist language on the show: that has no place on our screens in 2015 just as scrapping with a colleague is not an acceptable way to behave when one is at work. Mr Clarkson's apologists might like to believe that he has been singled out because he is the antithesis of the 'lefty' BBC and the PC brigade have been looking for an excuse to cut him down for some time. The fact is, however, that Jezza, like the employees of any other company, has to follow his employer's rules if he want to carry on being so handsomely remunerated. And that is his problem: he seems to believe that the income generated by 'Top Gear' makes him untouchable. Well, the news is, JC, it doesn't. Schoolboy sniggering at racial epithets among your pals in the pub is crass: doing it on national TV is unacceptable. It's not about being 'PC', it's about being a decent, human being and respecting other races, other people. Similarly, you may be the star of the show, but physically abusing fellow workers for whatever reason is never right. Again, it's not about the politics or what Jezza believes, it's just straightforward decency. Or common sense as Jeremy himself might say.
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