Jeremy Clarkson has become embroiled in a fresh row, as it emerged that the BBC is set to clear the use of the word “pikey” in an episode of Top Gear.
The BBC has come under fire from the Traveller Movement charity, which criticised the corporation’s decision to clear the use of “pikey” as “legitimising the use of a racist word”.
The BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee published the findings of its internal investigation on Tuesday, ruling that the use of the word in the show was not racially motivated.
The Traveller Movement’s complaint, lodged last year, relates to an episode of Top Gear that aired last February featuring a race between popular 1980s hatchbacks.
During the programme, Clarkson is seen erecting a sign at the start line with the words “Pikey’s Peak” and Richard Hammond’s choice of a Vauxhall Nova is ridiculed.
Clarkson’s comments include saying that “All Novas are driven by yobbos who turn them over” and that no one used to buy Novas “it was much easier to steal one”.
The BBC Trust committee acknowledged that “most” dictionaries state that the origin of the word pikey is related to Travellers and Gypsy communities.
However the committee decided that there was no “intended racist reference” in how the word was used in Top Gear, and that it had “evolved into common parlance among a number of people to mean ‘chavvy’ or ‘cheap’... [that] ... viewers would not necessarily associate it with the Gypsy and Traveller communities”.
The BBC, in a submission to the committee defending the use of the word, said that the sign “Pikey’s Peak” was a pun on the famous American course Pike’s Peak and that it was “illogical to interpret the single use of the pikey as a reference to [the Traveller] community”.
A spokesman for the Traveller Movement said he was “horrified” that the BBC has cleared Top Gear’s presenters using the word.
“The claim that it has evolved a new meaning and that most people do not realise that it has any reference at all with Gypsies and Travellers is absolute rubbish,” he said. “Top Gear have used the word in direct reference to Gypsies and Travellers in the past and to say that this time it means something else is absolutely breathtaking in its mendacity.”
The BBC Trust committee said it had carefully considered the Traveller Movement’s complaint and noted that the word pikey did have the potential to be deeply offensive.
It said that BBC programme-makers needed to show “extreme care and sensitivity” using it in shows and “advised considerable caution in its use”.
The Traveller Movement said it now intends to take its complaint to broadcasting regulator Ofcom.
“The BBC is meant to set the bar on standards,” he said. “By legitimising the use of a racist word on Top Gear, a pre-watershed entertainment programme, they could not have set it any lower.”
