Top Gear

[rockershovel]

One thing I do notice in my travels is that Top Gear is one of the most ubiquitous programmes in the world, whatever Clarkson does people like it. Frankly, I find it difficult to envisage the shouty, self-promoting Evans having the same success, and I rather think that anyone at the BBC who thinks otherwise is in for a disappointment.

[Horsetan]

Would it have made any difference if Sabine Schmitz had been lead presenter?

[PhilJ W]

Agreed Pete. Anyone who can persuade someone to pay him the amount of money he gets for what he actually does must be a very clever idiot.

Its still less than what the other three idiots were being paid.

[Pacific231G]

Whitehall is by no means the busiest London highway and I see no problem with the siting of the Cenotaph there. Might help to remind Govt not to start wars quite so haphazardly.

 

It may well be that this incident has been blown up a bit by the anti-BBC faction. But if you are in the BBC, you know that faction exists and you are brain dead if you give them the ammunition to shoot you down with. Whoever set this up should be handed their P45.

 

And as for the feeble excuse that "we had permission from Westminster City Council". That just proves that some Councils will do anything for money these days, not that it was a good idea.

Joseph

If you can predict what the anti-BBC lobby might find to get offended about and know how to head it off there's probably a job waiting for you as the next BBC Director General. 

If you look beyond the hype there was actually nothing wrong nor offensive about the setup and no reason why Westminster CC should have refused permission. The mistake was for both Chris Evans and Westminster CC to accept the criticism at face value and apologise instead of checking the facts first. 

 

It was only how certain people, mostly with an axe to grind,  chose to interpret some very carefully chosen shots taken on very long lenses that created the "offence". 

Was it "offensive" for Top Gear to do a set up involving driving round the Arc de Triomphe in Paris a few years ago? That's where France's unknown soldier is laid to rest and it would have been very easy for some ill wisher to construct a shot with a stunting car appearing to be right on top of the the eternal flame.

 

If you believe the fundamentalist free marketeers currently mounting a sustained attack on our BBC then every ITV programme is better than any BBC programme, every prison run by G4S is better than any run by the Prison Service, and every rail franchisee has done a far better job for less money than BR ever did.  

[Steve K]

You can accuse Top Gear of many failings over the years but a lack of respect for Britain's armed forces certainly isn't one of them.

 

This.

 

They used to involve the forces regularly in the show, and always made sure that they came over well.

[ajaxjones]

Chris Evans if you notice always removes his glasses when apologising, while still mentioning mitigation and other factors. But still apologising and insisting its someone else to take the decision. Class act

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Anyone who can persuade someone to pay him (Evans) the amount of money he gets for what he actually does must be a very clever idiot.

 One must assume there's a large audience out there who enjoy his particular shtick. I happen to be indifferent, it's the kind of thing that is funny once spontaneously from a ten year old, wears out its welcome in microsecond from a middle aged man.

 

...If you believe the fundamentalist free marketeers currently mounting a sustained attack on our BBC then every ITV programme is better than any BBC programme, every prison run by G4S is better than any run by the Prison Service, and every rail franchisee has done a far better job for less money than BR ever did.  

 Can anyone rational believe otherwise? Lookit, this computer you are using and every other good thing you use and consume is the invention of free enterprise; got its beginnings from individuals chipping flint knives, running around to find food, and moulding clay. 

[jjb1970]

The problem for the BBC is that it has been seriously under mined by the revelations of unpleasant abuse by so many of its stars over a period of several decades along with a general impression that either management were either complicit in brushing things under the carpet or wilfully ignorant of what was going on. Personally I can't stand Rupert Murdoch and find most of the newspapers appalling, but I think that the BBC can only blame itself for a lot of the current anti-BBC sentiment and the hatchet stories appearing in the press.

[Vanders]

Lookit, this computer you are using and every other good thing you use and consume is the invention of free enterprise

Not really. Early electronic computers were largely a result of military spending during WW2 (ballistics & radar, specifically), the Internet was developed by the US defence department for several decades before we got out grubby paws on it, the world wide web (specifically, HTTP & HTML) were developed by a researcher at CERN which was all paid for with public money, and the asymmetric encryption that underpins your ability to use the internet securely was developed by government security & spy agencies.

 

Then on top of that the majority of the software that is in use between your hands on the keyboard and the message being stored on the disk of the RMWeb server is going to be Open Source, in one form or another.

 

Computers & the internet are actually one of the areas where "free enterprise" tends to follow, not lead.

[ajaxjones]

Chris Evans will be removing his glasses later this morning ...

[MJI]

Not really. Early electronic computers were largely a result of military spending during WW2 (ballistics & radar, specifically), the Internet was developed by the US defence department for several decades before we got out grubby paws on it, the world wide web (specifically, HTTP & HTML) were developed by a researcher at CERN which was all paid for with public money, and the asymmetric encryption that underpins your ability to use the internet securely was developed by government security & spy agencies.

 

Then on top of that the majority of the software that is in use between your hands on the keyboard and the message being stored on the disk of the RMWeb server is going to be Open Source, in one form or another.

 

Computers & the internet are actually one of the areas where "free enterprise" tends to follow, not lead.

 

I thought mainly from codebreaking

[Guest]

I thought mainly from codebreaking

 

That's the well known one.

But firing tables for guns require a lot of computation as does aircraft design which is what the Germans used their early computers for.

[Vanders]

I thought mainly from codebreaking

Not as much as you might think, mainly because those computers were kept secret so didn't go on to influence the development of newer machines very much. The Americans used their machines for firing tables, and things like nuclear weapons calculations. Those machines went on to heavily influence future designs, even in the UK.

 

RADAR research gave us a lot of early hardware that proved useful, such as CRT displays and memory devices (delay lines, Williams tubes).

[petethemole]

Some of the Bletchley Park machines were dismantled and the parts returned to GPO Telephones stores. Some were kept as it was known that the Soviets had captured large numbers of Enigma machines and their successors and it was assumed they would use them.

[Paul.Uni]

[MJI]

 

Sorry but the annoying **** puts me off

[andyram]

He is probably not a fan of you either

[Vanders]

Good to see that the high quality camera work & direction has been maintained. I'm still not convinced though, and if anything that just makes Matt LeBlanc look as wooden as I'm expecting him to be. 

[Brinkly]

I liked Evans on the radio, but have really gone off him recently, because of the silly self promotion.

 

TFI Friday is a well known classic. Frankly I didn't want to hear about it 6 time an hour, solidly for a three week period.

 

Even the way he is dressed in that trailer (leather jacket) and the way he shouts, to me, screams of a man trying to copy Clarkson.

 

I might be wrong, but I don't think the re launched version will last 15 odd years with him at the helm.

 

Regards,

 

Nick.

[New Haven Neil]

Hmm.  Imitating the Clarkson 'Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh' is just so pathetic.  I want to like the new programme, as I am an incurable petrolhead, but the Ginger - nah.  The rest might just make it.

[Steve K]

Well, I think the trailer looks quite good.

[Graham_Muz]

At least it was a trailer and not a caravan...

[rockershovel]

Red Bull have a lot to answer for. That looks to me, like a Red Bull commercial, or infomercial, in the Top Gear style. My sons bought me a video at Xmas, supposedly the sequel to Bruce Brown's classic "On Any Sunday". I haven't dared admit that I lost interest about 15 mins in and have never watched it since.

 

"On Any Sunday" was about professional racers, club men racing for the fun of it, and Steve McQueen. The supposed sequel us a quick skip through anything Red Bull sponsor, and much too much about people I've never heard of, doing things I don't care about.

 

Evans annoys me and I can't watch him for any length of time. On the other hand, one thing I HAVE learnt in my travels is that the Clarkson version was hugely popular amongst people who have never owned a car, and may well be watching it in a dubbed version anyway. So, who knows? Not me. Who cares?not me.

[EddieB]

Two comments:

 

- imitation is the sincerest form of flattery;

- sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

 

Trailer is enough to put me off.

[DavidB-AU]

As expected, the viewers are not happy.

 

 

 

Meanwhile Clarkson, Hammond and May have just seen the Twitter reactions.

 

 

Cheers

David