Many ask themselves why Jeremy Clarkson may look prepared to abandon the Top Gear ship. Apart from his current theory (published in The Sun) in which he talks about how nature has made a mistake when inventing the dynosaurs and how no-one mourns their passing now , he offers an even deeper explanation. It's just that this happens... in the past, way back in 1999.
The piece is currently published on the Top Gear website and could shed some light on the matter. Here's a taste of it:
"By the time I got round to the Cadillac Seville STS [1998], the Clarkson attacks were only midly noteworthy. You had grown to expect them. The shock tactics had become predictable and so weren't shocking any more. And it was the same with the metaphors. The first time you heard me liken some car to the best bits of Cameron Diaz, you probably sniggered about it at school all the next day. But now, it's tedious."
The presenter is obviously talking about the previous and first TG format, a game he played between 1988 and 2000. As the mature part of our audience can recall, the original show was actually about cars and less about the drama that has come to characterize its modern-day format.
Clarkson was just as... Clarkson back then, so it might seem difficult to imagine that, behind his eccentric attitude, Jeremy is much like Charlie Chaplin - afraid of failure, always striving to avoid it no matter how great the fame grows.
While the man has never been scarred of passing the border of acceptable (remember that old time when he crashed a 911 to prove his negative point about the Zuffenhausen machine?), he will only do it if he considers the result worthy. Sure, his acceptance of the notion may be twisted, but Jeremy has been intensely evaluating each and every "poisoned" humorous arrow shot.
Oh and Clarkson hasn't always had such a bad relationships with Top Gear producers. While he reportedly hit assistant producer Oisin Tymon in the face earlier this week, back in the day Jeremy and producer Andy Wilman resuscitated the show, convincing the BBC that a reinvention and not canceling was the way.
From 2002 the adventure was on, but the problem is that the controversy, which was just an ingredient in the beginning, ended up becoming some sort of a main pillar for the show and has now killed it altogether.
I remember Wilman admitting Top Gear could crush under its own weight some years ago. Well, it has, but not because a diminishing of the audience. No. Top Gear has fallen because it was resorting to offending large categories of people in order to impress its public. Clarkson's slope remark during the Burma special brought him racism accusations, the H982 FKL risky number plate sparked an outrage in Argentina and these are just two of the most recent examples. Now this has been tedious.
Taking it any further would have meant, first of all, breaking certain written and unwritten laws of journalism. It seems Clarkson's inner alarm I was talking about above has been pulled.
Fret not fans. Perhaps Top Gear is not actually dead, or perhaps it is - Clarkson's Twitter description now reads "I am probably a presenter on the BBC2 motoring show,Top Gear". But this is not the point here. Like many hard-working actors, Clarkson has become Clarkson, the role now lives on within him, which means he'll carry on playing himself with or without the BBC. You just need to wait and see in which form he'll reach out to the world again.
"By the time I got round to the Cadillac Seville STS [1998], the Clarkson attacks were only midly noteworthy. You had grown to expect them. The shock tactics had become predictable and so weren't shocking any more. And it was the same with the metaphors. The first time you heard me liken some car to the best bits of Cameron Diaz, you probably sniggered about it at school all the next day. But now, it's tedious."
The presenter is obviously talking about the previous and first TG format, a game he played between 1988 and 2000. As the mature part of our audience can recall, the original show was actually about cars and less about the drama that has come to characterize its modern-day format.
Clarkson was just as... Clarkson back then, so it might seem difficult to imagine that, behind his eccentric attitude, Jeremy is much like Charlie Chaplin - afraid of failure, always striving to avoid it no matter how great the fame grows.
While the man has never been scarred of passing the border of acceptable (remember that old time when he crashed a 911 to prove his negative point about the Zuffenhausen machine?), he will only do it if he considers the result worthy. Sure, his acceptance of the notion may be twisted, but Jeremy has been intensely evaluating each and every "poisoned" humorous arrow shot.
Oh and Clarkson hasn't always had such a bad relationships with Top Gear producers. While he reportedly hit assistant producer Oisin Tymon in the face earlier this week, back in the day Jeremy and producer Andy Wilman resuscitated the show, convincing the BBC that a reinvention and not canceling was the way.
From 2002 the adventure was on, but the problem is that the controversy, which was just an ingredient in the beginning, ended up becoming some sort of a main pillar for the show and has now killed it altogether.
I remember Wilman admitting Top Gear could crush under its own weight some years ago. Well, it has, but not because a diminishing of the audience. No. Top Gear has fallen because it was resorting to offending large categories of people in order to impress its public. Clarkson's slope remark during the Burma special brought him racism accusations, the H982 FKL risky number plate sparked an outrage in Argentina and these are just two of the most recent examples. Now this has been tedious.
Taking it any further would have meant, first of all, breaking certain written and unwritten laws of journalism. It seems Clarkson's inner alarm I was talking about above has been pulled.
Fret not fans. Perhaps Top Gear is not actually dead, or perhaps it is - Clarkson's Twitter description now reads "I am probably a presenter on the BBC2 motoring show,Top Gear". But this is not the point here. Like many hard-working actors, Clarkson has become Clarkson, the role now lives on within him, which means he'll carry on playing himself with or without the BBC. You just need to wait and see in which form he'll reach out to the world again.
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