I lunged over a banquet table and gouged a shop foreman in the throat with a serrated butter knife at lunch one time
Remind me never to make you angry. Or even mildly annoyed.
I'm sure behind the scenes there's a ton of pressure with deadlines and so on.
This is true. TV deadline pressures are very stressful. However, I have a background in television, working under much tighter deadlines than the Top Gear crew. As in, you start with a blank slate at 8am and need to have several hours of programming, most of it produced in-house, in place starting at 4 and going on through 5, 6, and 10 that evening. I never punched anyone, nor did any of my coworkers. One reporter at a competing station, who all of us in the market always thought was nuts anyway, did decide to attack her coworker by yanking her hair. She was fired immediately.
Attacking coworkers is not the norm in the television field, and those whose nerves get so frayed under deadline pressure that they snap and punch people wouldnāt last a week.
@shadowfax , please donāt get me wrong. People who know me know that Iāve always been the low key quiet type and usually if thereās flames I try to tamp them down rather than fan them on.
However, Iām one volatile so and so on the inside and while I let some things slide off of me thereās a switch that flips at some point and the gloves come off due to very high principles.
While never ever needed and thankfully so, how many mechanics keep a .380 sidearm in their toolboxā¦
I did; and not a soul knew about it. Tucked away in a Snap-On vacuum gauge box. Just in caseā¦
That incident db4690 related just flat appalls me. The guy who pulled that stunt on him should have been sacked immediately and the PD called. Iām also aware of the āgolden boyā thing as Iāve worked with a few of them also.
That being said, if that guy had tried to strangle me several things would have happened on the spot and in the following order.
A. Pack tools.
B. Quit.
C. Leave strangler curled up on the floor with broken kneecaps and screaming for the EMTs after applying the previously mentioned 36" breakover.
D. Or leave strangler on the floor unconscious with the same tool while awaiting the EMTs and the PD to whom I would freely admit that I laid the guy out and was proud of it. Charge me; big deal.
The service manager at that place must be a real tool and fool and signed disclaimer or not I would bet that in a court of law that disclaimer would not mean squat based on what the guy did.
@ok4450 donāt get me wrong ā I donāt have any particular ethical objections to putting people who deserve it in their place. I just donāt particularly want to be on the receiving end of it.
Youāre right, btw, signed disclaimers and posted notices do not trump the law. Else Iād post a notice that everyone who glances at my house must pay me $1000, and go on a very nice vacation
My lawyer father used to say posting a sign that you intend to kill trespassers does not suddenly make murder legal.
I would imagine that the final arbiter will be the one thing that determines everything; money.
A huge cash cow involving hundreds of jobs is not likely to be disrupted long term.
The unknown to me would be that if (for the sake of discussion) Clarkson whaled on the guy off the cuff and without being provoked then why did this producer not call the police and lodge an a ssault complaint?
@db4690 Funny you should bring that up. At a Nissan dealer where I worked about a decade or so ago. We had a salesman legitimately choke out another salesman. The GM knew about it, everyone knew about it. But nothing was done. The guy who got choked pulled some pretty shady stuff (allegedly), that ended up costing the other guy around six or seven grand in commissions. I general consensus around the dealership was that he had it coming.
If anything, this will just promote the show even more.
Clarkson, or either of the other 2 leave, the show will probably feel just like the US version does now.
As far as we all know, all this could be staged to get publicity. There has been far worse thing done to gain press time.
As far as @shadowfaxās comment about trespassers. I have a friend that has a signā¦āBecause of the sudden increase in the price of ammunitionā¦there will be no warning shotsā.
According to The UK newspaper, The Telegraph, Clarkson is definitely being āsackedā, following an investigation of the recent incident in which he admitted punching a producer overā¦a food issue.
Itās official, heās out. BBC Director General Tony Hall said:
"It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. It is not a decision I have taken lightly. I have done so only after a very careful consideration of the facts and after personally meeting both Jeremy and Oisin Tymon.
I am grateful to Ken MacQuarrie for the thorough way he has conducted an investigation of the incident on 4th March. Given the obvious and very genuine public interest in this I am publishing the findings of his report. I take no pleasure in doing so. I am only making them public so people can better understand the background. I know how popular the programme is and I also know that this decision will divide opinion. The main facts are not disputed by those involved.
I want to make three points.
First ā The BBC is a broad church. Our strength in many ways lies in that diversity. We need distinctive and different voices but they cannot come at any price. Common to all at the BBC have to be standards of decency and respect. I cannot condone what has happened on this occasion. A member of staff ā who is a completely innocent party ā took himself to Accident and Emergency after a physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature. For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.
Second ā This has obviously been difficult for everyone involved but in particular for Oisin. I want to make clear that no blame attaches to him for this incident. He has behaved with huge integrity throughout. As a senior producer at the BBC he will continue to have an important role within the organisation in the future.
Third ā Obviously none of us wanted to find ourselves in this position. This decision should in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC. I have always personally been a great fan of his work and Top Gear. Jeremy is a huge talent. He may be leaving the BBC but I am sure he will continue to entertain, challenge and amuse audiences for many years to come.
The BBC must now look to renew Top Gear for 2016. This will be a big challenge and there is no point in pretending otherwise. I have asked Kim Shillinglaw to look at how best we might take this forward over the coming months. I have also asked her to look at how we put out the last programmes in the current series. "
We will now see much scramblingā¦ The BBC to replace Clarkson and likely May and Hammond if they follow through on earlier statements not to renew without Clarkson. The Aussie version is not too bad, the US version stinks on ice showing the immense difficulty facing the BBC. Revenues will tumble.
We will see many other networks trying to entice all three to replicate the show elsewhere. Some have suggested Netflix. The Stig can and has been replaced several times at Top Gear but the new show cannot name him (or her) āStigāā¦ Possibly āOur Tame Racing Driver Who Shall Not Be Namedā as a dig at the BBC and homage to Harry Potter at the same time? Who knows? I believe the show will continue.
May and Hammond have a reasonable out to their previous statements - i.e. they stood by Clarkson before Clarkson decided to beat on some producer, but since it was Clarkson who engineered his own destruction rather than being witch-hunted by some boss who was out to get him, they could say that theyāll carry on with the show.
Iāll admit that my viewership of TG fell off once they started devolving into playing up Clarkson as an oafish jerk. The āslopeā incident in Burma left a very bad taste in my mouth toward both Clarkson and Hammond (May, as I recall, was not in that particular scene). Itās possible to be entertaining without stooping to derogatory racial language thinly disguised as a commentary on the elevation of a bridge.
Really, New Top Gear started off being irreverant and very entertaining, and ended up many years later making some rather sad attempts to become Howard Stern Talks Cars. I donāt see that TG needed to go down the shock jock route, and Iām hopeful that theyāll find a new host(s) who will get the show back to its roots.
It would also be nice if they started being entertaining while also being informative. By the end, you really didnāt learn much about cars, and you had to take anything you did learn with a grain of salt because itās an āentertainmentā program and therefore not required to be truthful about them. I think thereās room to be entertaining like Top Gear used to be, while also being an actual informative show about cars.
For those who say that they decry āpolitical correctnessā, all I can say is that those folks donāt realize just how humiliating it can be to peopleāwhether they are from Myanmar, or they are Romany folks (who are frequently referred to as āGypsiesā), or Black people, or Mexicans, or developmentally retarded people, or sexual minorities, orā¦members of any groupāto hear insulting epithets thrown around for their supposed humor value.
I suppose that Mr. Clarkson did indeed have what he perceived to beā¦the rightā¦to make fun of those groups for the amusement of himself and others. He may even have felt that his sense ofā¦entitlementā¦allowed him to throw a 20 minute tantrum over his menu options, and then to physically assault somebody because he was unable to keep his emotions in check.
However, it is clear that employers also have the right to terminate you if your behavior becomes violent and/or if your language becomes offensive.
If it was shown on TV, Top Gear management approved it. Since the program has been around so long, it is reasonable to think that the BBC approved it. This is not to say that either shared the sentiments spoken or that Clarkson did. He portrayed a character that he developed. He may have been the character we saw, but unless anyone knew him, we wouldnāt know for sure.
The last straw was when he reamed his producer out for 20 minutes and then beat on him for 30 seconds. Now Iām not one for violence but be honest, how many would have liked to have done the same to a smart aleck coworker or employee? Might have been worth it to him and like he said the BBC was making a big &$&@&&$ mistake and had &@&&$&@ the show up.
Top Gear has been going downhill (IMHO) for the past five series or so, but still it is one of my favorite shows. Hammond and May have said that they will not do the show without Clarkson and both their contracts are up at the end of the current series. I donāt think the show will be as popular without Clarkson Hammond and May. I do think they their will be a bidding war for their services, and we may see them back doing essentially the same show under a different name. Sort of like what they did with the show ā5th Gearā as is pertained to the old incarnation of Top Gear.
The BBC was in a tough spot, Clarkson has a long history of saying some less-than-politically correct things, and that was part of his humor and a part of the show. The BBC had always just either looked the other way or had him make a half-assed apology, which again was part of the humor of the show. I never found anything he said to be hugely offensive, he mocked every nationality, ethnic group , and minority pretty evenly. Anyway, had they not done anything, it wouldāve essentially said that Clarkson was bigger than the BBC and could do whatever he wanted without repercussion. And if they fire him, they would essentially be throwing millions out the window. There was no āgoodā decision to be had.
It should also be pointed out that the personalities of the presenters are somewhat exaggerated on TV, Clarkson isnāt as insufferable and bombastic as he appears on TV. May isnāt quite as pedantic, and Hammond isnāt as dense. They just turn it up to ā11ā for the cameras.
I donāt blame the BBC for what they did. They pretty much had to fire him. Clarkson brought it upon himself. I still canāt help but wonder if this was all a ploy by Clarkson for one last huge payday though. May and Hammond hadnāt resigned with the BBC, though they were expected to. Maybe, just maybe Clarkson figured that if he could get out of his contract and get Hammond and May to not resign. It would create a scenario where they could get big money offers from all over the world to do their show. All three of them are pretty financially secure, so itās not like they absolutely needed the work, so if it backfired and they didnāt get offers as big as they were envisioning they could turn them down. But if it worked they could increase their incomes substantially, and even if the BBC was highest offering but only wanted Hammond and May, the BCC would certainly pay more for at least two of the three original presenters, as opposed to completely alienating their audience with three new guys. So the risk for Hammond and May would be low in such a scenario. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Thatās not an excuse. Thereās a line you donāt cross when playing a comedic character. Colbert played a character too, but he didnāt stoop to spouting minority vulgarities.
At a certain point, saying vile things and claiming itās OK because you were āin characterā becomes an insight into your actual character.
