Monday, December 7, 2009
Jeremy Clarkson - the new Kenneth Williams
Revelations that the BBC's Top Gear team faked aspects of a "flying caravan" segment on their show should hardly come as a surprise.
Aside from inevitable ponderings about how stratospheric the programme's car insurance bill must be, whenever I view Top Gear the one thought that I most frequently return to is just how scripted it seems.
And I'm not just talking about the feature segments; I'm also talking about the "live" aspects of the show. However much Jeremy Clarkson might not like to be thought of as a tight-wearing thesp, my reading of the show has him as little more than the next line of a long legacy of actors that includes, among countless others, Lawrence Oliver, George Takei and Kenneth Williams.
For, although I don't particularly rate him as an actor (Richard "the hamster" Hammond gets my vote - I really think he has the potential to be rather good), it seems to me undeniable that the programme is as and rehearsed and scripted as the most professional West End show.
I guess it can only be testament to the show's writers and actor-presenters that there is still debate about whether the programme is all ad-libbed. I have an incredulous colleague who grows indignant and adamant at the mere suggestion that even the tiniest part of the show might be "faked". It is also a great tribute to May, Hammond and Clarkson that Top Gear has even won an Emmy in the Non-Scripted Entertainment Category.
So, when it was revealed by a helicopter pilot that James May's flying caravan stunt was "set up, the programme had been completely scripted - we were hired to play along" and that the crash-landing "was a controlled accident", I finally felt vindicated. At last, surely, my colleague would be forced to face the truth.
"No," he said, "James May, may be a bit-part actor with dandy-long hair, but Clarkson, he's a genius and a man of action – he never fakes anything!"
Image © tonylanciabeta, via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence
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posted by Fuse @ 3:00 AM 
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