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Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear
An anonymous reader writes According to BBC News, Jeremy Clarkson, longstanding main host for the automobile television show Top Gear, will not have his contract renewed. This decision came about two weeks after he was suspended due to an altercation with a Top Gear producer involving catering during filming for the show. Admittedly not the nerdiest news of the day, but it can be said that his thirteen-year run on the new format of Top Gear has interested many Slashdot users who love their cars and the entertainment that the show has brought to them.
No, because their star with an over-inflated ego physically assaulted a coworker and drew blood. Nobody should have to put up with that. That being said I'll miss him as he was a fairly unique personality in tv.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
No. It's a non profit, licence funded public organisation. Slightly differnt but the difference matters.
The licence fee may be considered a "tax", but it goes straight to the BBCthe BBC. It doesn't go into the general tax pool.
It is explicitly separate from government and while it's impossible to keep them completely isolated from each other, this separation is taken very seriously. The BBC has no qualms about upsetting the government, and any government that tries to exert pressure will be very unpopular.
Nobody outside the US likes American vehicles. They would have been state-of-the-art in the rest of the world circa 1975.
Actually, there are quite a few american cars that he has out and out loved on the show - he refused to get out of the Ford GT when he ran it dry (supposedly) on the track, and then bought one. He drove the Lexus LFA across Nevada and loved it. He drove the Shelby Mustang GT5000 across Europe and loved it. He drove the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor across British Columbia and loved it.
Those are just a few examples from the most recent few series.
Clarkson is positive about cars he finds he likes, and he is negative about cars he finds he dislikes. Plenty of both of those in the world - see how much he hates Peugeot if you think its a "hate on America" thing...
No I am pretty sure they make more money off Top Gear being a worldwide success then they do off the British TV tax.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Top Gear had hired most of a small hotel for a filming shoot. The shoot went on longer than expected and when they got back to the hotel they found the kitchen was closed. Not exactly unexpectedly since the kitchen open hours were stated.
So the idea that this was somehow a conspiracy by the producer to get Clarkson fired seems like a stretch unless you think he deliberately delayed the shoot so they would get back after the kitchen was closed.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
I guess that's what made the show work, but physical assault is crossing a line.
bickerdyke
Yeah, let's not confuse badges with production and design. A Ford Focus is a European car that they brought to the US in limited models to replace the shit pile they had. The Toyota Tundra is an American car, the Chevy Spark is a Korean Car, and the Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe were the exact same car...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I'm probably a bigger fan of Tesla than you are, but watch this if you think he's against EVs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Anyone who has been bullied at work must be sickened by the public support for Jeremy Clarkson. Even in sacking him for the physical assault on Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon, BBC director general Tony Hall seemed almost apologetic, taking the opportunity to thank Clarkson for his work on Top Gear and wishing him the best for the future.
But if you've experienced bullying first hand then you know what a destructive force the Clarksons of the world are. Your workplace becomes a place of dread and fear. The stress becomes not just a part of your daily life, but a part of who you are as a person. It changes you.
My own experience of being bullied began when I took a job with a company that had just promoted a long-standing employee in to a management position. He had no experience of managing people, he received no training, and he openly said that he didn't want the job. He was visibly stressed almost constantly, and resented that he was still expected to work and not just manage other people's work.
Very early in the job I was shouted at in the middle of a busy office for completing a task that should have been cancelled. It was a foul-mouthed and very personal tirade of abuse, accusing me of being untrustworthy, and came totally out of the blue. Then my manager realised that he had forgotten to mark the task as cancelled, and quietly in a private room away from other staff, he apologised and promised never to speak to me like that in front of people again.
The details of bullying incidents are generally repetitive and boring, so suffice to say, this was just the beginning of what became regular abuse: Shouted at in the middle of the office for things I had allegedly done wrong, and then apologised to in private.
I put up with the abuse for way too long. I'd spoken to my union rep and kept a bullying diary as advised, but I never started a grievance procedure. Colleagues said I should, and one day I ended up talking to the company secretary about it, but I backed off, determined to resolve the issue myself. Ultimately, I told myself, this is a case of two grown men having a clash of personalities, and I should be able to resolve it. But of course I couldn't.
After about a year I had to take time off work for an unconnected health reason, which seemed to go on a lot longer than one might expect. After a week back at work, I was off again with flu, which seemed to go on forever. My doctor was puzzled and I was sent to the hospital for tests. But in conversation with my doctor one time I mentioned about how it was actually quite nice to be off work because it was an escape from the bullying, and it was as if I'd said the magic word. My doctor was certain that the stress of being bullied was the root cause of my poor health. It explained everything. It turns out that a year of sleepless nights and constant anxiety isn't very good for you.
The BBC has done the right thing in sacking Clarkson. When I finally had to take formal action against my manager, the company was combative, and handled it on the basis that I was making it all up. I opted for the least "official" form of grievance, third-party arbitration, and my manager held his hands up to what he'd been doing and promised to change. Whether he could or not, I don't know, as I've not been well enough to return to work yet.
I've watched every episode of Top Gear since Clarkson joined the programme. I like him as a presenter. But I see him now for what he really is: A person who knows how to present himself to the people who control his career -- his bosses and the viewers -- but feels he can abuse the people below him. No doubt he will now be snapped up by another TV channel, or Netflix, and he'll continue to make great programmes that entertain millions. But we know now what he's like behind the scenes, and even a bully that knows he's a bully will still be a bully.
No I am pretty sure they make more money off Top Gear being a worldwide success then they do off the British TV tax.
You're "pretty sure" are you? You know these sort of mindless random thoughts stated as fact is pretty fucking harmful.
Top Gear worth per year, about £50million
Licence fee collected last year, £3726million
Get a grip.
Clarkson was the one to report the assault so if anyone was looking for an excuse out of re-upping a contract it was probably Clarkson. This way he can leave without carrying any of the baggage simply quitting the show would have given him.
Jeremy will be fine. He knows that every other channel has been trying for years to poach him away from the BBC and once he sold his interest in the show to the BBC a year or so ago his income was no longer tied to how well Top Gear itself did.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Are people really going to miss yet another totally fake show pretending to be reality? Is it just because this one combined cars and Daily Mail-style politics?
It's worth understanding that Top Gear hasn't pretended to be reality for quite some time. They deadpan a lot, but it's all pretty clearly acknowledged to be a live-action cartoon. I read a very good article that talked some about this recently, 'Top Gear' broke my heart (and it wasn't Jeremy Clarkson's fault):
As an auto journalist, I'm used to Clarkson's antics. He's a classic buffoon, and the genius of "Top Gear" is that Clarkson and his co-hosts, James May and Richard Hammond, realized long ago that transforming themselves into cartoon characters would be both incredibly lucrative and lavishly entertaining. The show has been on forever, and while it's always presenting new cars and ever-more-outlandish spectacles to its legions of avid viewers, the basic shtick has become reliably changeless: three weird looking English dudes doing goofy things with rides both exotic and mundane.
He also talks about some of Top Gear's strengths and weaknesses -- definitely worth the read if you're a fan of the show, or just want to know a bit more about why so many people seem to love a show about cars.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for a primadonna for whom curses at an employee for 20 minutes and then physically assaults him up for half a minute
There's no excuse for this, but as others have said there's a bit more to it. Clarkson may or may not be a primadonna (vs just being a knob, as May referred to him several times), but given the stress he was under and the alcohol, him blowing his top over something small isn't a huge surprise. He certainly deserved to be disciplined, but I'm not sure sacking him outright was the best decision. One thing I am certain of is that the BBC will come to regret it.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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He may be up on charges - it's currently under investigation. Oh, and he was on about his 3rd warning after being disciplined for his racist comments.
I hate how the media is spinning this, that because 1 million people or whatever want someone back in a TV show, a TV star should somehow be above the set of laws and expected normal social behavior that the rest of us have to deal with. When someone starts hitting co-workers over the lack of warm food, they should get severely reprimanded - why is this even a discussion. The answer is of course because - and I will put this in tabloid terms because that is the only thing that seems to get across these days - of the way media works this day, how everyone now has a voice through the Internet, and the few voices of common sense gets drowned by moronic opinions of idiots. Why should you care about the opinion of a labour law expert when for each such expert ten thousand average Joe's and Jane's have touchy feely opinions that tell them something different.
The behavior in question seems to be some type of inflated ego syndrome, that people get so full of their own success that they feel petty stuff like following rules and being civil to one another is beneath them, that such things apply only to other people (which by the way includes their fan base). It is always sad to see how someone sympathetic get famous, then are starstruck by themselves, and shortly after enter a downward spiral and discover their dark side.
It is even sadder to watch the fan base. If the average fan turned away from this type of behavior and actually stopped watching a show for a period if the host has done something particularly offensive, that would send a clear message. Instead the shows probably get higher ratings because of the extra attention.