Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Top Gear Scandal: Fact Or Fiction

There is a bizarre scandal involving Jeremy Clarkson of the British Top Gear TV show.
Apparently, Clarkson, who is the star of the British Top Gear, was angry that he did not get warm food after a long day of shooting, and instead got some cold cuts.
So, the BBC, the state run television station, thought it was so horrible, they refused to run 3 new episodes of the British Top Gear show, shows that were set to run, and instead are showing Top Gear reruns.
From the Guardian UK: The BBC’s decision to suspend Jeremy Clarkson and pull the three remaining episodes of Top Gear cost BBC2 nearly 4 million viewers on Sunday night.
With Clarkson set to give the BBC his first full account of the alleged fracas with a Top Gear producer this week, BBC2 filled the void left by its top-rating show with a repeat of Red Arrows: Inside the Bubble.
But the documentary about the Royal Air Force aerobatics team could only manage 1.3 million viewers, a 5.7% share of the audience, nearly 4 million fewer than watched last week’s edition of Top Gear.
The motoring show, fronted by Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, is consistently BBC2’s most popular show of the week, last week watched by 5.1 million viewers (19.4%).
The show’s future and that of its star presenter remain uncertain after he was suspended last week following an altercation with Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon at a Yorkshire hotel.
It was later revealed that Clarkson had telephoned Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television to apologise for his part in the row. Cohen felt he had no option but to suspend the star and cancel the remaining episodes of the current series.
Clarkson hinted in his Sun column on Saturday that it might be time for him to move on, saying the day had to come when “you wave goodbye to the big monsters”.  http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/16/bbc-top-gear-jeremy-clarkson-suspension
It seems bizarre that the BBC would suspend the show, putting many people out of work and pissing off millions of loyal viewers.
To me, this incident stinks to high heavens.
One of two options exist.
1. This whole episode is just a prank.  Maybe they weren't ready yet to show the final 3 episodes or that ratings were down.  By doing this, the BBC increases the viewership of Top Gear by creating a false scandal.  This is not beyond the hijinks of the Top Gear stars, so this is a possibility.
or
2. The BBC is a liberal organization but Top Gear is a show that caters to conservatives and the top of the BBC probably doesn't like the show, so they are coming up with a way to cancel the show.
Let's face it, if I were Clarkson, I would be pissed if I worked all day and evening, I would like to get a nice warm meal and the hotel they stayed at didn't as to damn lazy to help Clarkson out.
So, Clarkson took it out on the producer, who should have dealt with this issue before it became an issue.
Perhaps, the producer should have paid the cook to stay a little longer and serve the stars what they wanted.
Or the producer could have brought their own cooks.
Or the producer could have notified everyone that there was a food shortage.
In other words, the producer failed in doing his job.
And so Clarkson called the producer a dirty Irish c..t.  So what?  Here in the U.S., we have a major college that portrays the Irish as being drunk and always fighting.  On St. Patrick's day, we glorify the Irish by getting stone cold drunk.
So, now the PC BBC is supposedly conducting an investigation, into what, I don't know.
Meanwhile, the show is not being seen, except in reruns, which makes no sense.  If you are not going to show new shows, why show the reruns?
I guess this is what you get when you have a government run TV station.

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