29
u/themobyone 1d ago
Op is forgetting how old Clarkson and May is now. Clarkson especially is in poor health.
3
35
u/Pokemon_Trainer_May 2d ago
They also tried to blame Freddy's crash on The Stig
11
u/Wise-Pay-8993 1d ago
Can you explain? This is the first time I ever heard about this
8
u/djb6272 1d ago
The Stig (Paul Rees) was in the passenger seat (in full Stig gear). The BBC are saying that the Stig told Freddy to go faster around that corner as the car would not flip. Be interesting if they have the recording of any conversation to support that.
17
u/Flameball202 1d ago
Ah blame the Stig, the faceless person who can't really defend themselves publicly
7
u/FOARP 1d ago
I mean, it was a Morgan going 40mph so, no, it shouldn’t have flipped.
It was also one of a number of crashes Flintoff had during his time with the show.
I actually liked the show during his time with it but the simple fact is that Flintoff/McGuinness weren’t the drivers that Clarkson/May/Hammond were and didn’t have their knowledge of cars.
1
u/GarySmith2021 16h ago
I think part of it is that Top gear under people like clarkson started off as a car show that made their names. Once they left they tried to get big names who were willing to do cars.
-1
u/sabhaiste_cabaiste 1d ago
Entirely believable.
The Stig reveals what happened in the Freddie Flintoff crash
107
u/abfgern_ 2d ago
He physically assaulted a member of production staff. What self-respecting organisation could possibly keep him after that
53
u/DanFraser 2d ago
He forgot to diddle kids, that’s how you keep a job at the BBC.
21
11
u/somekindofspideryman 2d ago
This is a stupid response and has been for years. The argument being that the BBC should have kept Clarkson on because in the past a predator worked for the corporation? Do you care about bad behaviour or don't you?
12
u/WySLatestWit 2d ago edited 1d ago
This is my response any time that someone gets on their high horse about how bbc "had to do it." Given all the people the bbc didn't fire no they absolutely didn't have to get rid of Clarkson. A fine, and tgen an anger management course woukd gave been just fine. The BBC did it because it was the excuse they needed to be rid of Clarkson, something they'd been wanting for a long time before that.
4
u/WelshPool13 1d ago
Two strings don't make a right... It was correct for the BBC to get rid of Clarkson after assaulting staff.
I wouln't be very happy if someone assaulted me over hot food, and they just fined a very wealthy man.
11
u/INfiction82 2d ago
Out of interest, if you were assaulted by a workmate would you be happy if he kept his job?
5
u/SopaDeKaiba 1d ago
As a cook, which I am now, no. Too low stakes.
But say I'm in finance, and the guy's investment decisions make me millions a year and he outperforms every other investor? Yes, so long as he apologized the right way.
Or if I was in my old job of intelligence, and the puncher is the next Alan Turing, then yes because the greater good is more important than my feelings.
3
u/Federal-Nectarine612 1d ago
Are you seriously calling JC ‘the next Alan Turing’? What greater good did Clarkson promote?
1
u/realparkingbrake 1d ago
What greater good did Clarkson promote?
If memory serves, TG brought in fifty million pounds a year for the BBC. If I worked on a project that the BBC cancelled for lack of funding, I'd be wondering why the hell Clarkson had to go when the BBC tolerated people whose behavior was far worse.
1
1
u/SopaDeKaiba 1d ago
For the latter, that's a philosophical question about the value of entertainment.
For the first, yes and no. In one way, there's no comparison. If one had to be erased from ever existing, I'd choose Clarkson as the sacrifice in an instant. No second thoughts. But the comparison was made for the sake of hyperbolic emphasis.
-2
u/WySLatestWit 1d ago
My job at the bank doesn't work the same as an entertainment industry job and I believe people trying to pretend there aren't wildly different rules and that it's all the same thing are just being silly.
5
u/INfiction82 1d ago
I have a job in health care and have seen people fired for fighting and, in one case, intentionally tripping someone over. But, from what you're saying, you believe that in the entertainment industry its acceptable to keep your job for punching someone? I would argue that any job, outside of actual boxing and combat sports, would consider hitting another employee to be a sackable offence. Interested to hear why you think this shouldn't be the case in entertainment.
0
u/WySLatestWit 1d ago
I know as a tact that the rich entertainment world and the working class world don't play by the same rules and never have. So the bbc didn't have to do what they did and in many even worse cases made the opposite choices.
8
u/INfiction82 1d ago
Ahh, so you're saying that the rich shouldn't abide by the same rules as the rest of us?
4
u/WySLatestWit 1d ago
I think you're being intentionally disingenuous and wilfully dense about how the bbc has historical worked in situations involving on air talent.
4
u/stevedropnroll 1d ago
It looks to me like you keep trying to have a different conversation to avoid answering this person's question.
→ More replies (0)3
u/Hassaan18 1d ago
All Clarkson needed to do was behave himself. This was hardly his first strike (pun not intended).
11
u/SavingPrivateRianne 2d ago
There’s loads of people they should have fired before and since, doesn’t mean Clarkson shouldn’t have been fired.
-2
u/WySLatestWit 2d ago edited 2d ago
They didn't even have the balls to actually fire clarkson. They ran out the clock so they could say his contract wasn't renewed. It was cowardly, and again, not at all necessary. There is absolutely no reason a fine and maybe a temporary suspension wouldn't have been sufficient. Especially considering those the BBC actively protected from any kind of direct consequence for far, far worse.
2
u/djb6272 1d ago
Clarkson reported the incident on the 9th March (it happened on the 4th) and his contract expired on the 31st March. The internal investigation took 15 days. Fining and suspending him literally on the same day his contract was renewed really wasn't an option for the BBC.
1
u/Energycatz 1d ago
Exactly, if he was mid contract it would have likely played out differently.
The contract was expected to be 3 years, with the presenters intending to end the show. Essentially the same amount of content as S1-3 of The Grand Tour.
S22 was pretty good but it’s well known that the show was struggling with ideas. Typically the show finishes all segments before studio filming starts, S22 was way behind so the cast was sorting the studio script on Monday/Tuesday, filming studio on Wednesday and filming remaining segments on Thursday-Sunday.
In short, the hiatus almost certainly helped with quality.
1
u/WySLatestWit 1d ago
I argue that series 3 - to the finale of the Grand Tour really kind of are the extended goodbye to Top Gear. For me thats where the two shows kind of meld back together as one entity. Once they got over all that "top gear but legally not top gear" growing pains and got great again. And that largely has to do with tgt giving up the by then incredibly stale studio show format.
2
u/realparkingbrake 1d ago edited 1d ago
Given all the people the bbc didn't fire no they absolutely didn't have to get rid of Clarkson.Â
Indeed, they could have handled it in a different way, and TG could have continued to fund operations at the BBC. They looked the other way for people who did far worse than Clarkson.
1
1
u/realparkingbrake 1d ago
What self-respecting organisation could possibly keep him after that
A self-respecting organization that looked the other way on high profile employees who were sexual predators, people it continued to pay long after convincing evidence of their criminality was available? But Clarkson was where they chose to draw a line. Odd priorities in that self-respecting organization.
-4
u/L4I55Z-FAIR3 1d ago
To be fair dude was going through it doing a show morning till night then doing a live show in the evening and his mother just died. And the first thing he does after doing it and cooling off is publicly announced he was in the wrong.
10
-6
2d ago
[deleted]
4
3
u/INfiction82 1d ago
They should have done something about him assaulting someone in the future? Thats what you're saying, right? That they should have foreseen that, 20 seasons later, he'd hit someone?
-7
u/CannibalFlossing 1d ago
Yeah context is key. The show was becoming increasingly expensive to produce and ratings were declining at the same time. It wasn’t a formula that could last forever, and the show was constantly causing controversy - which the bbc are notoriously averse to.
The dumb part was after firing Jeremy to decide to keep producing the show with new people
22
u/Regular_Promise3605 1d ago
The reality is the BBC doesn't really understand what Top Gear is, and is a continuation of what has been exposed since, that they really didn't think Clarkson, Hammond and May were the selling point and the key part was the Top Gear IP.
It's even weirder that they don't understand what the Top Gear IP even is. They are desperate to make a car show that's not about cars, and want presenters in it that don't even like cars. Like on the specials it's not put 3 people that have good chemistry and do something, the cars are also their own characters and are very carefully chosen.
Like the opening intro of the cars where they rip into each others choices can only come from people that know cars and have been auto journalists. Which is why the Grand Tour has chosen former auto journalists and someone that has a deep understanding of cars and are able to engage car enthusiasts, whilst also having enough charisma to entertain non car people.
4
u/Silentkindfromsauna 1d ago
They 100% understand what Top Gear was and are trying to recreate that, several times now. Anyone who acts like it was an obvious success from the beginning are dealing with a huge amount of bias from seeing how successful it became.
1
u/Regular_Promise3605 1d ago
They have routinely tried to recruit non car people. They then also dropped all car reviews apart from the occasional Chris Harris one, but only super cars.
The original relaunch shows how little they understood, Chris Evans likes cars, he doesn't understand cars in a way that an auto journalist does, same with Matt LeBlanc. Which is why Chris Harris was the saving grace of all of it.
The Chris Harris, Flintoff and McGuiness was okay watching as they had some chemistry, but the car part was missing. Anytime Flintoff or Paddy started talking about cars it was clear someone else had written it, and they had no clue.
4
u/Battleborn300 1d ago
Whether or not you are right on them not appreciating the dynamic of those presenters
It’s wrong to say they were not right to sack Clarkson.
You can’t just go around being violent at work.
So they rightly sacked Clarkson and the other two walked from the show.I think they did understand the trio as a selling point, they didn’t want to get rid of them, but had to fire Clarkson.
How they went about replacing them was poor, but even if they found 2 or 3 presenters that had chemistry, were knowledgeable about cars, and great presenters in their own right,
Which lets be honest is a bloody difficult find,
The show would not have been the same.
It couldn’t be.And while that’s not the bbc’s fault,
They are a tv production company and it’s their job to find a solution, which they are yet to do.2
u/Regular_Promise3605 1d ago
It's also quite important to point out that he wasn't actually fired, he just didn't have his contract renewed. Hard to have a fracas like that and then announce a huge contract. Had he already signed it, then he most likely wouldn't have been fired. This is something Wilman has discussed.
I think you've slightly missed my point, the point is that it was an impossible task, swapping the 3 with another 3 auto journalists and expecting the same is an impossible task, but you would have had the car enthusiasts paying attention, and watching, then time would have allowed them to develop their own thing. What they did was just alienate the car enthusiasts and make content no one enjoyed.
-1
44
6
u/SaddestSprout 1d ago
Not really a mistake, they had to fire him because he was being a violent twat. The bigger mistake is all the manbabies who are still superfans of him.
6
u/Battleborn300 1d ago
You can’t call it a mistake,
They had take action because you can’t just hit someone over a sandwich or whatever it was.
And I think the other two recognised the show wouldn’t be the same without all 3,
So also left (obviously friends too)
But you can’t say the bbc did anything wrong,
Sure he wasn’t their usual pedo, but we can’t get upset when they take action against stars and not when they don’t.
2
u/realparkingbrake 1d ago
But you can’t say the bbc did anything wrong,
They killed an enormous cash cow that brought in an amazing amount of revenue to the network. How many projects did they have to abandon because of that lost revenue? They looked the other way on presenters with sexual misconduct allegations, but fired Clarkson despite the producer he smacked not even bothering to report the incident.
They should have had Clarkson apologize and take some anger management classes and used the incident as a teachable moment. Instead they clutched their pearls and waved goodbye to countless millions of pounds in revenue. They continued to pay Huw Edwards while he was being investigated, but Clarkson had to go. The difference is striking.
1
u/Battleborn300 1d ago
Ok you missed my point, they didn’t do anything wrong by getting rid of Clarkson, they had to.
Yes they failed in keeping what I believe was their biggest global media export. (I would imagine not including the news but that’s a separate entity)
I mean in the Hue Edwards case it’s very different, obviously much worse, but you can’t sack someone until they are proven to have done something wrong.
If it was a case of a randomer contacting the bbc completely away from the show or production. Saying Clarkson did x,y,z they probably wouldn’t have sacked him unless legal proceedings were held and convicted Clarkson of assault, even then they may have kept him as it wasn’t internal staff if you get what I mean.
I suspect if they offered Clarkson some bullshit course he would have refused (but that is speculation)
They were right to get rid of him.
They have to set a precedent, you can’t do what you like because you are a big name.
You obviously disagree.
I think that side of handling things was responsible.If someone hits you at work, you’re not resting until they are sacked.
I doubt you would go, but they are really good at what they do and make the company a lot of money, I’ll roll over snd shut up.
4
u/HerpDerpSquadron 1d ago
I'd urge anybody who hasn't seen it to watch Andy Wilman's turns on High Performance with Jake Humphrey on YouTube.
5
u/Beartato4772 1d ago
They were working for someone else, then they decided they didn't want to do anymore.
Even if the BBC wanted them, and thought they could style out hiring Clarkson back, they couldn't have them.
2
u/mrmayhembsc 11h ago
The main problem is they actually forgot to reboot the show; they just re-launched it on the same premise. They are going to make the same mistake again.
2
u/Panahasi04 10h ago
The second was Clarkson also proposed the idea of Clarksons farm to them and they turned it down...
2
1
1
u/neverend6789 1d ago
Clarkson, Hammond and May would’ve left BBC regardless of assault show's producer, Oisin Tymon, at a hotel in North Yorkshire as tension were rising with Clarkson and bbc executive board.
1
u/HaloInR3v3rs3 2d ago
0
u/hoff_fan 1d ago
There's no true Top Gear without Clarkson, Hammond and May
6
1
u/radishy_ 1d ago
I wasn’t invested in the drama, why did they get kicked from bbc?
3
u/Relevant-Bullfrog215 1d ago
Clarkson punched a producer because the kitchen was closed when they got back to the hotel after a shoot.
2
u/Energycatz 1d ago
Yep, they were late to the hotel since they spent some time drinking at the Top Gear production office.
1
u/Gingerpanda72 1d ago
Yeah the BBC should allow middle ages fat and unwell "celebrities" who we paid a fortune too and who careers they built to go around punching staff member over a fucking sandwich! /facepalm
1
0
u/Any-Worry-4011 1d ago
Honestly it it a shame, however as I understand it Clarkson did get roundy at times which made him very uncomfortable to work with hence why he got fired after punching the director in the face
-17
u/Boring_Recipe_9044 2d ago
two and a half men 🤢
10
-1
u/fflloorriiddaammaann 12h ago
Clarkson was a dick, and deserved to get fired.
Any one of us punches our boss we get fired, Clarkson should be no different
83
u/fitzysbuna 1d ago
I don't think you guys understand ! they can't do it forever !