Only Top Gear could cause such an almighty hoo-ha before it has even reached the screen. (We’re talking actual Top Gear here – with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc, Eddie Jordan, the Stig, plus those other ones you’ve never heard of – not the Punchy Oaf and his old muckers’ Amazon Prime effort which we won’t see until the autumn.) The BBC show starts in May, but it’s already managed to annoy an awful lot of people. Including...
Those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and their relatives, after footage emerged of Matt LeBlanc pulling doughnuts around the Cenotaph in an insanely powerful car called a Mustang Hoonicorn. Retired colonel Richard Kemp called the stunt “gravely disrespectful”. Chris Evans said sorry on the radio.
The chancellor. Same occasion (Joey, in his Hoonicorn on Whitehall, lest we forget) but this time it’s George Osborne, moaning about the noise while he’s trying to write his budget speech. You don’t care? You might when there’s an inadvertent hike in petrol duty.
Katie Hopkins, who doesn’t think much of the new presenters. “Token-tastic,” she tweeted when the lineup was announced, presumably because one of the seven isn’t white and one doesn’t have a willy. “Where’s the disabled one?” You don’t care what KH thinks either? You’re right. Annoying her has to be a plus.
One fan who told the Daily Star they weren’t happy that the one female presenter, Sabine Schmitz, turned up to the launch dressed as a Bavarian barmaid. “I thought the idea was to go away from the sexist regime under Jeremy Clarkson,” said fan continued. A source told the Daily Mirror that Sabine wanted to inject some fun into the event and had picked the outfit herself. So are we talking political correctness gone mad or same old same old? It’s hard to tell, from the outside. Anyway, it’s outrageous ...
Lisa Clark, the executive producer brought in by Chris Evans, who quit soon after, amid a lot of gossip about diva-ishness and control freakery (none of it confirmed).
Bob Mortimer, the comedian, getting involved for some reason, called Evans a “timebomb” in a Tweet.
Ian Brady accused Evans of “craving more fame” in a letter, though you might argue that what a child murderer thinks doesn’t much matter.
Chris Evans himself, who threw up after Schmitz took him for a spin in a fast car. Car sickness – are you sure you’re cut out for this, Chris?
Then there are the delays, and the cuts, and the overspends, and the breakdowns, to the point that people are already starting to call it, hilariously, Flop Gear. But I think that’s unfair, given that we haven’t seen any of it apart from what’s leaked or dripped out.
So what can we expect, given what we’ve spied so far? Blokes arsing about in cars, I’m guessing. Doing stunts, burning rubber, being inappropriate, saying sorry. Not exclusively blokes, but mainly blokes. And some people are going to be annoyed, and many others are going to love it. Not entirely unlike old Top Gear.
