Top Gear co-creator Andy Wilman has said that the show’s team got “giddy on their own popularity” and began “writing our own rules”.
Wilman and Jeremy Clarkson met as students at public school in Derbyshire. Together the pair created Top Gear, of which Clarkson was a presenter and Wilman the executive producer between 2002 and 2015.
The motoring series became a huge success for the BBC, and made stars of Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Wilman worked behind the scenes.
Along the way, the series ran into various controversies. In 2008, hundreds of viewers complained after Clarkson made a joke about lorry drivers murdering sex workers. Three years later, in 2011, the Mexican government lodged a formal complaint with the BBC after Mexicans were characterised on the show as “lazy, feckless, flatulent” and “overweight”. The presenters also described Mexican cuisine as “refried sick”.
Then in 2014, Clarkson came under fire once again for using the racist term “slope” to describe an Asian man. The episode in question saw the trio build a bridge over a river in Thailand, after which Clarkson commented, “That is a proud moment but there’s a slope on it,” referring to a local man walking on the bridge.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Times, Wilman has now reflected on the moment and expressed some regret. “To us, ‘slope’ was just one of those slang terms out of a commando comic,” he said.
“In hindsight it was stupid. We’d got giddy on our own popularity and we were writing our own rules.”
He did, however, put some blame on a “regime change” at the BBC, claiming: “The new bosses were ideologically at odds with our brand of humour.”
Wilman said that an executive producer was assigned to the programme in order to “literally be their watchdog” and “make sure we didn’t play silly buggers with the content”.
The producer had apologised at the time of the incident, calling it a “light-hearted” play on words.
Wilman said: “We were not aware at the time, and it has subsequently been brought to our attention, that the word ‘slope’ is considered by some to be offensive [...] If we had known that at the time we would not have broadcast the word in this context and regret any offence caused.”
Ofcom ruled that Clarkson’s use of the racial slur breached broadcasting regulations. It said that the TV presenter “deliberately employed the offensive word to refer to the Asian person” and that it was not justified by the context of the programme.
In 2015, Clarkson’s tenure at the BBC ended after an altercation saw the TV presenter punch producer Oisin Tymon. He had reportedly been left annoyed that he could not order hot food while he and fellow cast and crew members were filming at Simonstone Hall Hotel near Hawes, North Yorkshire.
According to The Sun and Mirror, the hotel’s chef had gone home by the time they arrived and the stars were offered cold meat and cheese platters – but Clarkson wanted a steak.
An investigation was launched and, in solidarity with their co-host, May and Hammond refused to sign a new contract, which brought the show in its most successful form to a close.
Along with Wilman, the trio went on to make The Grand Tour for Amazon Prime Video. Wilman is also the producer of Clarkson’s Farm.
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