Clarkson gone!

[InsaneApache]

o tempora o mores

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32052736

Well they finally shot the Goose that lays the proverbial, so what now? It doesn't look good...



If he did punch the lad then he had to go. Any employer would have no choice, however the Beeboids at the top have had it in for him for a long time. He just delivered his head on a platter for them.

Well that's my Sunday night buggered.

[Fragony]

Mixed feelings, the BBC have been covering up much worse things. If he abused someone he is rightfully fired, but just about everybody and their dogs and cats at BBC knew about the sexual abuse of minors of that Glitter guy.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I love how much of a dick the interviewer was there.

As IA said, they've had it in for his for years and, to be brutally frank, I hope they sacked the executive who compared him to Jimmy Saville (if that was actually said).

I also wonder why he punched the producer - they make regular jokes about "The producers" and if they can't provide hot food at the end of a working day I do wonder about their competency. The most interesting thing is that Clarkson reported himself and it looks like, had he not, this would have been covered up - by the victim.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32052736

It's a weird case, to be sure.

[Beskar]

He was babied and pampered for being the 'goose'. Anyone else would have been sacked ages ago, the BBC finally grew a pair.

Plus, when do producers produce hot food to someone rolling in money? He couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone and order takeaway? It is a lazy and sad excuse of being in a privileged position.

A nurse can be disciplined for using a sachet of salt, but it is slap-up meal for him or he makes a producers life a living hell with them getting thoroughly insulted, humiliated and punched by Jeremy Clarkson. The latter is seen as perfectly acceptable.

Logic.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

He was babied and pampered for being the 'goose'. Anyone else would have been sacked ages ago, the BBC finally grew a pair.

Plus, when do producers produce hot food to someone rolling in money? He couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone and order takeaway? It is a lazy and sad excuse of being in a privileged position.

A nurse can be disciplined for using a sachet of salt, but it is slap-up meal for him or he makes a producers life a living hell with them getting thoroughly insulted, humiliated and punched by Jeremy Clarkson. The latter is seen as perfectly acceptable.

Logic.

Nobody said it was acceptable behaviour, they said the BBC was out to get him.

As to when do producers lay on food? How about always? The producer is supposed to run the production, which includes feeding the cast saying "Oh he should order takeaway" is just excusing the producer being sloppy. That doesn't excuse Clarkson's behaviour, but even Clarkson hasn't tried to excuse his behaviour, hell he reported himself, the producer he assaulted apparently tried to keep it quiet.

There's clearly been something else going on behind the scenes, this wasn't about hot food, that was just what made Clarkson flip out.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It was a good tv show. He really fucked up though.

[Kadagar_AV]

First of all... I am sad to see this great show go down... I don't even have a drivers license, but still I watch it with delight.

Secondly... Of course he had to get fired. You just can't go around and hit your producer.


But most importantly and positively, this frees up his time to do some other show, where he isn't bound by cars but can just take on whatever... He is to big a name to be left out in the media cold, and to damn cool for someone not to pick it up...

I would absolutely LOVE seeing him host a talkshow... So let's hope for the best, shall we?

[Papewaio]

Can't wait to see him doing nature programs like bird watching...

[Sir Moody]

I would absolutely LOVE seeing him host a talkshow... So let's hope for the best, shall we?

He hosted one before - it flopped badly

[InsaneApache]

I'm buying shares in ITV.

[Rhyfelwyr]

He always struck me as an adult version of a spoilt brat, can't say I'll miss him.

[Papewaio]

He always struck me as an adult version of a spoilt brat, can't say I'll miss him.

He always struck me as very British.

An eccentric mix of yob and snob yearning for the yesteryears when Britain made more things.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Brilliant response.

[InsaneApache]

Proof that the people who run the BBC live in a precious world of their own was supplied this week when Alan Yentob — whose title at the corporation is ‘creative director’ — told Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis that ‘there are quite a lot of programmes which reach out to audiences which are C2s, DEs, which aren’t the metropolitan elite’.

In other words, he seemed to be saying that Jeremy Clarkson may have been sacked by the BBC ‘but common people will still find something to watch’.

How simply outrageous! And how very, very kind of the BBC to make a few programmes ‘reaching out’ to the non-metropolitan elite (as if they live on Mars) — those downmarket low-earners who live in places outside London and the South-East.

Anyone listening might have thought Yentob was talking about a vanishing tribe or a special needs group, instead of those millions of ordinary people who (unlike him and his pals, with their trendy artworks and minimalist designer sofas) live in normal homes and want to watch decent TV programmes.

People who live in small houses and flats, who don’t drink Terroir Series Malbec wine from Argentina and eat tapas.

People who don’t holiday in Tuscany or rent nice houses in Devon and Cornwall. But people who manage to be happy, despite living outside sought-after Islington and Notting Hill postcodes, where most of our political leaders, media chiefs and the chattering classes seem to reside.

In his hamfisted way, by talking about social classes ‘C2s, DEs’, Yentob was referring to the large majority of Britons — the kind of people the BBC top brass and most politicians tend not to mix with on a daily basis, unless they are partaking in a rare public meeting.

With Clarkson heading off into the sunset, taking his millions of male and female fans with him — probably to a new home at ITV, who must be ecstatic — what evidence exists, apart from Yentob’s patronising remark about the lower social classes, that the BBC has any idea how to engage with these millions of licence fee-payers?

Having spent nearly a decade working as a top executive at the BBC, I can vouch that it’s run by a bunch of smug, self-satisfied, over-educated types (nearly all graduates of the same universities) who communicate in an opaque language and conform to a very limited set of beliefs.

These Polenta People (as I like to think of them, since they enjoy eating the fancy Italian cornmeal) embody Left-wing Hampstead talking to trendy, Left-leaning Barnes. Everyone else seems to be excluded.

They make simple — and arrogant — assumptions about what viewers and listeners will enjoy, based on their own narrow experiences.


Alan Yentob — whom I love dearly, despite his failings — has never worked anywhere else apart from the BBC, starting as a trainee in 1968.

Is there any other billion-pound business with such a narrow gene pool at the top?

In typical corporate-speak, BBC executives talk of ‘delivery’ and ‘accountability’, and worry about ‘programme reach’.

But outside work they inhabit an incestuous world, cocooned away from this target audience.

They congregate at weekends, swapping in-jokes over bottles of Waitrose wine at kitchen suppers (that epitome of the chattering-class meal).


Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values.

They loathe people such as Clarkson — a rare beacon of political incorrectness — which makes it even more remarkable that he lasted so long at the BBC.

Just how inward-looking BBC bosses have become was illustrated this week with the fallout from the Top Gear debacle.

The story of Clarkson’s sacking was the lead item on the 5pm news on Radio 4, ahead of the plane crash in the Alps in which 150 people died.

How predictable that, in the rarefied atmosphere of the BBC, a millionaire TV host is deemed more newsworthy than a major aviation disaster.

As part of a PR damage-limitation exercise after the BBC had sacked one of its most popular presenters, Yentob popped up on several programmes, from Steve Hewlett’s Media Show to Radio 4’s PM and BBC2’s Newsnight, talking about his ‘pal’ Clarkson and what a shame the whole story was.
“
Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values”

Surely, if this BBC nabob had been more honest, he would have admitted the real disaster for the BBC was that the Clarkson episode had exposed its management as dangerously out of touch with a huge section of the people who fund them: licence fee-payers on lower incomes.

For anyone on the minimum wage, paying the annual TV licence represents a far higher proportion of their weekly budget than it does for someone living in a nice flat in Primrose Hill or Notting Hill.

The truth is that the BBC has increasingly, over the years, represented the metropolitan elite (and become blander in the process).

However, Top Gear was a rare example of a format which appealed to the sort of audience the BBC cannot afford to lose — viewers who are switching away from BBC1 and watching more programmes on Sky and Channel 5.

The tragedy is that it is not only BBC top brass who live in this out-of-touch bubble. The same applies to our political leaders.

David Cameron, with his well-heeled pals in the Cotswolds (who, ironically, include Clarkson), knows no more about white van man and ordinary women than his nemesis, Ed ‘Two Kitchens’ Miliband, who lives in a £2 million home in London.

They might talk about ‘hard-working men and women’ — political code for ‘C2s, DEs’ — but they don’t know any.

No wonder a survey of voters this week found that the three attributes they thought best described Cameron were ‘out of touch’, ‘smug’ and ‘arrogant’. Miliband was ‘weird’, while Nick Clegg was also ‘out of touch'

What’s more, there is an unhealthy nexus between politicians and influential figures at the BBC and in other parts of the media.

For example, there was Ed Richards, a quintessential New Labour man who was an adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before becoming, for 11 years, the head of the media watchdog Ofcom.

Let’s not forget former Labour minister James Purnell, the BBC’s so-called head of strategy who was alleged to have been behind an odious smear against Clarkson in which he was compared to serial paedophile Jimmy Savile. Purnell strenuously denied being involved.

Then there is Ian Katz, who left The Guardian to run Newsnight. Not far away in Islington lives Tom Baldwin (married to an heiress, living in a very posh house), who quit The Times to work for Ed Miliband as his spin doctor.

They are typical of the metropolitan crew who claim to know about social deprivation and the working class but don’t have a clue how real people live.
“
The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time”

When I worked at the BBC, I was the only person in management without a university degree. I was also the only one with an Estuary accent — and things have changed very little since then.

This week, a new quiz started on BBC4 which sums up the problem. Called The Quizeum, it’s chaired by Mr Smug, Griff Rhys Jones, and broadcast from a different museum each week.

I watched the first episode. There wasn’t a studio audience to give the show any life. As one critic observed, ‘perhaps no one wanted to come’.

With all the will in the world, I can’t imagine any Darrens from Doncaster tuning in to such a programme.

Nor would they find much in common with the horribly precious historian Lucy Worsley (queen of the simper) who presents programmes about royal palaces.

The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time.

There’s Michael Portillo and his train journeys. Clare Balding walking around Britain. Stephen Fry presenting everything from quiz shows to documentaries.

The BBC should reflect the diversity and richness of British culture — not just the tastes of those who read The Guardian, drive eco-friendly cars, despise Clarkson and make their own sourdough bread.

Goofy in the Mail today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ue-run-it.html

[Furunculus]

I have no objection to sacking clarkson if HR think his action is sufficiently bad.

That said, the death of top gear (I don't believe the beeb for a second when they say the rude and irreverent style will continue), is a tragedy.

For two reasons:

Generally - The clarkson obnoxiousness is a necessary antidote to the prissy hypersensitivity that infects society. Poisonous bilge encouraged by stupid incitement to 'x' hatred laws.

Personally - I love the fact that beeb staff, as the priesthood of prissy hypersensitivity, feel physically ill every time they pass clarkson in the corridor. Tolerating clarkson is good for their souls.

I hope May and Hammond jump ship, join Netflix with clarkson for a new show called Bottom Crank, and bury the now emasculated Top Gear in the ratings.

Again personally; I want beeb staff to feel the pain of knowing their world view does not exist without challenge.

[Visor]

Used to be one of my favourite shows when I had a tv. Shame.

Don't know that there is much else to do when you hit a producer so no problem with the punishment.

[Pannonian]

For some people, Jeremy Clarkson is what they want society to be more like. Personally, I prefer David Attenborough. Zero obnoxiousness, maximum education.

[InsaneApache]

The guy who thinks that there's too many people on the planet and we should get rid of them. Not him obviously. That guy?

[Pannonian]

The guy who thinks that there's too many people on the planet and we should get rid of them. Not him obviously. That guy?

Exactly the guy. And typical of you to resort to the HIGNFY-style "not blablabla...somevieworother...blablabla" in lieu of wit or thought.

[Greyblades]

To me Clarkson always came off as unedited; devoid of the self correction most of us do in public so as to conform to society's ideals that, while good, does not always come automatically. I dont know if I should consider such honesty admirable, but in combination with clarkson's sense of humor it certainly made him endearing in a George Carlin sort of way.

He turned himself in when the producer wanted to let it slide, In my experience such an assumption of responsibility is depressingly rare among those in the public eye and should be point in his favour to even our resident critics.

[Husar]

I'm personally more in favor of David Icke.

[Sarmatian]

Why are you lot making such a big deal out of it? I mean who the freak cares if we watch Top Gear on BBC or Top Gear Twin on some other tv station?

[Greyblades]

We're making a big deal of it because most of us watch top gear for the specific combination of Clarkson, Hammond and May. Right now it's uncertain if they will reunite now that Clarkson has to find a new job.

[Sarmatian]

We're making a big deal of it because most of us watch top gear for the specific combination of Clarkson, Hammond and May. Right now it's uncertain if they will reunite now that Clarkson has to find a new job.

Didn't both Hammond and May confirm that they are following Clarkson, though?

So, you'll get exactly the same show, with a different title on a different channel.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Didn't both Hammond and May confirm that they are following Clarkson, though?

So, you'll get exactly the same show, with a different title on a different channel.

They said they wouldn't do Top Gear without him afaik.

The fact that the BBC even entertained the idea that they would stay suggests the people running it are borderline sociopathic.

[Sarmatian]

They said they wouldn't do Top Gear without him afaik.

The fact that the BBC even entertained the idea that they would stay suggests the people running it are borderline sociopathic.

You may be right. I'm not following it that closely, but I do remember reading that both Hammond and May referred to themselves on the internet as "unemployed TV presenters", or some such.

[drone]

If I remember correctly, all three had contracts expiring at the end of the month. Chances are Hammond and May just won't renew (any word on the Stig? ).

I've said it before on these boards, Clarkson is a national treasure and deserves an knighthood. Completely non-PC, and totally unapologetic about it. I wonder if my cable company gets ITV America...

[edyzmedieval]

What I loved about those 3 was the way they balanced each other out when it came to present it - it was one of the funniest shows around, and just as others have said, cars were cars, but the presenters made up more than half the appeal of the show.

I'm gonna miss Top Gear.

I do hope those 3 crazy heads find a way to revive it under a different name...

[a completely inoffensive name]

If they really wanted to, they could easily make another show. At this point, it may not be worth the trouble and the drama. I'm sure they all have enough money in the bank to enter early retirement.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

If I remember correctly, all three had contracts expiring at the end of the month. Chances are Hammond and May just won't renew (any word on the Stig? ).

I've said it before on these boards, Clarkson is a national treasure and deserves an knighthood. Completely non-PC, and totally unapologetic about it. I wonder if my cable company gets ITV America...

One of the most interesting things I read was a woman saying "there wouldn't be all this fuss if he had punched a woman (sic)", not realising that Clarkson is the sort of sexist pig who would never hit a woman.

Well, that's how this journo saw him, as a pig.