I see that the BBC is suspending the Top Gear programme ("for the foreseeable future"), a massively popular series that's (amazingly) been running since 1977. Most people will know the show from it's controversial presenter Jeremy Clarkson but he only started on the show in 2002 and there have been many presenters over the years including the likes of Noel Edmonds, Sue Baker, Julia Bradbury, Stirling Moss and Angela Ripon among many others, the list is quite a who's who of TV faces of the last few decades.
Like many blokes, I used to watch the series back in the late 90s and early 00s but found that by the time Clarkson and crew had evolved the show into blowing up caravans and insulting Argentinians I'd out-grown it, the humour had become obvious and it felt more like a spitting image cliché of itself rather than anything to do with actual cars that normal people (like me) might be able to afford. I never bothered getting into the later series, Chris Evans didn't seem to do much for the brand, and the latest trio with Freddie Flintoff also seemed a bit fake to me.
Anyway, the show was certainly popular and sold a ton of DVD's for the BBC, although the pay-outs to stars who crashed (Flintoff got £9M apparently) must have put a slight dampener on the financial side of things. I'm sure the latest accident has led this ever "health and safety" conscious institution to this point, well that and the whole idea of a bunch of slightly racist, slightly sexist (middle-aged) "lads" larking around in gas-guzzling death traps being totally incompatible with an ultra-woke youth audience of GenZ'ers. Maybe someone will re-invent the programme and take it back to being a simple review show, I'd love to see stuff around alternative fuel cars, like electric and hydrogen, more consumer information and less "show-biz" perhaps, but I guess that doesn't sell DVD's or Netflix downloads at Christmas!
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