If you are French, German, Romanian, Mexican, American, Asian, Muslim or, most recently, Argentinian, Top Gear has talked shit behind your back – or directly to your face. There are fewer cultures left in the world that haven’t already been stereotyped, blankly dismissed or viewed with not-at-all veiled colonial contempt by Clarkson and co than are yet to be discovered by man. Like the world’s most efficient logging company, Top Gear has no qualms about felling any culture that stands in the way of a cheap laugh. After all, it seems to be a profitable vein of humour.
It is easy to forget that Top Gear is probably the most watched factual entertainment programme in the world. It is broadcast in 170 different countries, to an average audience of 350 million viewers a week. That is the equivalent of the entire continent of South America sitting down together every Sunday evening. And that’s discounting the numerous spin-offs done the world over, including Top Gear Australia, Top Gear Russia, Top Gear USA, Top Gear South Korea, and the soon to be released Top Gear China andTop Gear France.
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It is by far the BBC’s most profitable programme, ahead of juggernauts like Doctor Who or Strictly Come Dancing, due to its peerless international syndication, with the production company behind Top Gear raking in £149 million in revenues for the year 2012. That is a staggering turnover for one programme. It is the most requested programme on the iPlayer, its companion magazine is published in thirty-one countries and its Stunt School app has been downloaded at least five million times. How about a Top Gear branded baby-grow, duvet cover or commemorative stamp? All available to be purchased at the click of a button.
The show isn’t just a cash cow for the BBC either. Jeremy Clarkson netted £14 million from the show last year, comprised of the dividend of the production company and his presenter’s salary. Hammond, May and most of the senior production team are multi-millionaires. It is impossible to argue that the show is anything other than a transcontinental televisual phenomenon, which has no equal in terms of viewing figures, international reach or longevity. Lest you forget, the next series will be number 22.
The route of this success can be found in both the nature of the programme and the presenters. The show is unabashedly childish and aims itself squarely at that infantile personality strand which people suppress as they age. Stunts like playing conkers with caravans or rocketing a Mini off a ski jump are not intended as high art, but are to be gawked at with a glazed expression of rapture. It’s also no coincidence that its prime demographic are middle-aged men, who tune in for the escapist delight of watching men of their own age driving extravagant cars in exotic locations, and generally having a laugh with their wanky mates.
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Inevitably, Clarkson, Hammond and May are also a major selling point. All three have done television work outside Top Gear due to their popularity, and are certainly one of the most instantly recognisable presenting trios on television. But really, Hammond and May are minor satellites around the Clarkson supergiant. Let’s not forget, Clarkson is the only distinguishable one. Richard Hammond looks like he is being molested by his own trousers, and is also not a real hamster, whilst James May seems to hate himself almost as much as I hate him, but that’s as much as you can say.
The show is so geared towards providing a platform for Clarkson, it is regularly embarrassing how fleetingly the other two feature. He gives the opening monologue, leads the news, does the celebrity interview, stars in most of the major car tests and hosts the Cool Wall. And Clarkson has clearly been pressing his stamp ever harder onto the programme as the years have progressed.
The show never used to cause diplomatic crises. But it is no coincidence that as Clarkson nestled into his morally apathetic niche as the self-appointed freedom fighter against political correctness, so Top Gear’s joking went from old-fashioned to casually distasteful. It would be hard for the programme to have not changed in the face of such a deafening foghorn for thoughtless, zeitgeist-stalking rubbish.
Discussing the cultural insensitivity of Top Gear is not original, but it is crucial to flag up the irreconcilability of its success against its moral obligations. Standards are always going to lose to cold hard cash. That’s the reason why the BBC is compelled to act as the increasingly pathetic apologist for Top Gear’s imbroglios, and why Clarkson himself has yet to be fired. Because if Clarkson goes down, so does Top Gear. And then so does the BBC’s largest single programme revenue stream.
The fact that its viewing audience not only stays intact but often expands through these crises speaks volumes of the popularity of that tactless humour. The Top Gear-Clarkson brand of crass and, crucially, deliberately insensitive ‘banter’ obviously resonates with many people. Whether it’s because people actually find pseudo-racist jokes amusing, whether it’s interpreted as ironic, or whether audiences find it oddly titillating to hear something non-PC is unclear. The fact remains that it has an enormous, consistent viewing audience, so their style of chat is working, to the extent that the Top Gear brand of humour is becoming its biggest export, and its most distinct characteristic.
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To debate the morals of what Top Gear does would be to broach a labyrinth concealing a minefield. But it seems bizarre that if anti-political correctness vitriol is what they want to flog, why they don’t admit it and, as shamelessly as possible, embrace it. To constantly defend themselves by saying they’re not racist, or that the incidents are accidental, comes across as so listless as to beggar belief. The number plate H982 FKL was a coincidence? Was it fuck.
Just confess to choosing it, admit it was tasteless taunting and let the audience inevitably lap it up. After all, whenever they do something catastrophically stupid, who are their justifications aimed at? Top Gear’s innumerable critics can anticipate the pre-prepared response of non-intended offence and their audience clearly keeps watching whatever.
Let them decorate the studio with life-sized portraits of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, begin each programme with an oath of allegiance to Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and wear white hoods on special occasions. At least then we’d all know where we are; the audience would continue to cackle and the rest of us would continue to cry on The Guardian’s Comment is Free page.
But if we can take only one message away from this: please don’t clothe your own darling toddlers in Top Gear branded cack.
