There goes an old saying…”Sometimes monkeys die.” It’s not a particularly good saying, and it hardly fits in this instance. So moving on, in an update to the Jeremy Clarkson debacle from a couple weeks ago, it has been made official by the BBC that they will not be renewing his contract. Shortly thereafter a statement was made by James May in one of the most oddly surreal front porch interviews I’ve ever seen, that James, Richard and Jeremy are, effectively, a package deal; echoing the statements made by James and Richard initially when Clarkson was suspended on why they wouldn’t be doing the last three episodes without him. So here we are. Top Gear as we know it is ending after 13 years, in a very sad, and ultimately unnecessary way. More…
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So by now it has become pretty well known that long-time TV favorite Jeremy “Jezza” Clarkson, has gotten himself into a splash of hot water. “So what?” you say, continuing to respond to written text verbally like some kind of reverse stenographer. “Jeremy is always in trouble, why not just tell me the sky is blue??”
Well you have a good point, though I’d appreciate you not throwing your sandwich at the monitor like that. Clarkson certainly has a way about him, but the question is really if it’s as big of a deal as it seems. I’ve been discussing this with a smattering of friends over the last week or so and it’s kind of difficult to see what all the fuss is about. I mean sure, he punched some guy in the face over something as ridiculous as a meal being cooked, but this is Jeremy “actually-only-2-years-older-than-Tom-Cruise” Clarkson. I won’t go as far as to make comparisons to a certain C. Montgomery Burns, but there are slightly more intimidating people to have throw a ham-fist towards the middle of your face, if i’m honest. It could be argued that, had he not already caused so many other rabbles in the past, this issue might have been of lesser consequence. But to be honest, even coming from the perspective of someone in the U.S., a place where Ray Rice is a thing, trying to get on the level with suspensions, hearings, lawyers, and show postponements for what has already far outgrown its original (and very fitting) Fracas-labeled jeans, seems like too much.
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