'Bad jackets and worse hair': Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of Top Gear. Photograph: BBC
To be filed under Things Gareth Doesn't Get - alongside the cult of David Beckham, why we should care about a schism in the Church of England and what precisely is the problem with the Heinz Mayo advert - is ... Top Gear.
On Sunday, the debut of the new series attracted 6.2m viewers and it's the most popular programme on the iPlayer.
Why? It's really boring. Watching Clarkson et al driving cars and spouting over-the-top similes and metaphors to describe the experience is bad enough but those bits in the studio? Three middle-aged men in bad jackets, with worse hair, wittering on about the new Hyundai coupe and the annoyingness of road signs or discussing pictures from the internet of spectacular car crashes. This does not make for good telly. It makes for a bad night in the pub. And how do they persuade the audience stand around in that hangar guffawing at every weak quip made by May, Hammond or Clarkson? By promising them a bed for the night and as much cider as they can drink as soon as the cameras stop rolling?
So it's big around the world and, apparently, huge in Poland. But then so is Catholicism and so were those creepy twins who were prime minister and president. So, open as I am to new ideas and to changing my mind, tell me as I am genuinely baffled: what's so great about Top Gear? And perhaps more pertinently, how long before BBC1 pinches it from BBC2?
