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Clarkson

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Whether you like him or not (for the record I loathe Top Gear but don’t mind him on other programmes) surely there can be no argument that he had to go for his awful behaviour. What I am I saying? This is the net; of course there can be arguments. Off you go then …

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  1. Jeremy who? I like this idea of Coogan and Brydon taking over the show, but Chris Evans? Yuk! Of course he had to go. He’s an arsehole and a bit of a thug by the sound of it. On a good day he could be entertaining, but he’s hardly Groucho Marx. The Mexican abuse was really out of order and made them all look like populist bigots.

  3. I disagree.

    I don’t see why someone should be sacked just for physically assaulting a colleague, assuming they’re a sufficiently valuable asset and have the “right” politics.

    If that uppety producer had known his place this would never have been an issue.

  5. I don’t watch Top Gear, and I neither like nor dislike Jeremy Clarkson, but I think assaulting a work colleague – particularly over something trivial – should probably lead to the sack.

  7. Ha had to go. Nobody can reasonably expect to continue in their position after physically assaulting a colleague. The upshot for the Beeb is that Top Gear is effectively dead. I hope they can see that attempting to continue with new presenter(s) is a lost cause. A “zombie” show if you like. incidentally I speak as someone who stopped watching TG after Clarkson’s ” shoot striking NHS employees” broadside. He almost redeemed himself on that album programme mind.

    • The worst thing is, the BBC had not choice and did the right thing but it means they have lost a £50m income as direct result of Clarkson’s actions. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was some legal grounds to sue him for lost earnings. Of course, there isn’t but it’s nice to dream.

      • How does that work Vince? Sue him for something he generated for the BBC? It would be like Man United suing Ronaldo because he used to score goals for them but doesn’t anymore.
        I don’t like Clarkson particularly but did like the Top Gear shows when they were on location. Clearly he has overstepped the mark but the hullaballoo is nonsense. My employer occasionally has to sack people for gross misconduct. When they do it is kept very hush hush and no ill is spoken of the person that has been fired. In this instance it seems through spite they will attempt to blacken his name by innuendo, carefully avoiding the potential for a court case. Spineless if you ask me.

        • I’m struggling to see where the BBC has done anything here than by the book. Having assaulted a BBC employee they could hardly ask Clarkson to complete the outstanding episodes, and with May and Hammond saying they wouldn’t work without him, the BBC had a very visible gap in their schedules that they would have to offer up some explanation for. I’ve seen no innuendo, or any commentary from official BBC sources that is anything other than textbook.

          Unlike the hilarious “banter” aimed at the BBC by Clarkson.
          http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/watch-jeremy-clarkson-deliver-foulmouthed-8882385

          Vince is correct – the BBC can sue Clarkson’s production company (he’s a contractor not an employee) for the payments they will have to return to other broadcasters for the episodes lost due to Clarkson’s misconduct.

          I will really miss Top Gear. But Clarkson’s getting no more, no less than he deserves. His production company must be open to action from the BBC because

          • Disagree. The BBC as far as I am aware chose not to show the final episodes. His production company I assume would have a case against the BBC for not showing them, not the other way around.

  8. It will be interesting, , to see what offers Clarkson gets. Any employer might think twice about taking on somebody who is known to have physically attacked a subordinate, along with racially abusive comments. For all of the talk about the BBC not renewing his contract because they’re too PC and so on, employment law is going to apply to any media company – will they take the risk?

  9. I didn’t write that he should be charged with GBH. I wasn’t present when the fracas took place so the severity of the attack is beyond my knowledge. An assault though undoubtedly happened. Everyday others in less exalted positions are arrested and subsequently charged for similar offenses.
    Either the rule of law is applicable to all or it’s just a farce and a sham.*

    *Which of course it is in far too many cases.

    • GBH is the intent to wound or to cause a wound. From the definition of a wound in the relevant GBH law:

      ” a wound is an injury that breaks the continuity of the skin. There must be a division of the whole skin and not merely a division of the cuticle or upper layer. A single drop of blood is sufficient, but it must fall outside the body”

      So a split lip is definitely GBH by the legal definition and the police are able to prosecute if made aware of it.

  10. At his best, Clarkson is some kind of Everyman bloke, but all too often a line gets crossed and he becomes boorish and offensive. He had to go. Had he stayed, the BBC would have had no credibility left at all.

    Even James May said Clarkson’s a knob.

    So, will it be Channel Five, Sky?

  15. It’s possible the producer went to A&E because without medical verification of his injuries he would get nowhere with a complaint to the police or a legal claim. So maybe it is going further?

  17. Does seem odd to rush to a presumably overstretched A & E with a split lip – the youth of today!
    BBC really had no choice to say goodbye to him – or not renew his contract which expires on the 31st – no doubt they would have kept him for his commercial worth if they could have found a way though.
    As for May and Hammond,they’ve both intimated they won’t carry on without him, which is probably good for them as the three can go to whatever broadcaster comes along as a package, and good for the BBC as it forces them to restart the show with a completely clean slate.
    Don’t think any of them will be signing on tomorrow though – the losers are the millions of viewers who enjoyed the show.

          • An A&E Doctor writes…

            I have no problem with someone coming to A&E with a split lip. Reasons for doing so include:

            (1) If the split is too anterior, it can run through the vermillion border and needs to be properly repaired for cosmetic reasons.
            (2) As stated above, they can bleed a bit.
            (3) Internal cuts to the mucosa (the shiny wet inner lip) can sometimes have embedded chips of teeth that need to be washed out.

            …and yes, there’s the documentary evidence of the medical chart if it becomes a police thing.

            As you were…

  18. Hard to see how any decision other than sacking could have been made but it’s still a shame. Clarkson has sailed too close to the wind in recent months, but at his best was a very amusing and watchable presenter, and the left-field comedy car show he helped to create was unmatched. Politically incorrect he may have been in an age when it is oh-so fashionable to be outraged at everything, but there is far more offensive material on the BBC masquerading as entertainment, and Clarkson made himself an all too obvious target for criticism.

    • As a Top Gear fan, I never had a problem with Clarkson’s character in the show. I found it funny and loved watching it with my kids. I will not defend the assault, the guy’s an arrogant idiot and has received just punishment for his crime.

  21. I think if you physically attack a work colleague then you get sacked. I have no issue with that. What IS pissing me off is the BBC not showing the remainder of the series.

    If the current team do a similar show somewhere else then I’ll undoubtedly watch it because its funny. I will NOT watch Top Gear if Chris Evans is a presenter.

    • The tail end of the DG’s statement – which I can’t find the link to just at the second – said that he’d asked managers to explore ways they could show the remainder of the series.

      And no, I wouldn’t watch it with Evans either.

  25. My general opinion of the man has been to ignore him when being deliberately provocative and boorish. In this case, however, it appears that he punched someone in the face because there wasn’t a hot meal available. If this is what really happened, this is the behaviour of someone who isn’t boorish, but actually spoilt and believes themselves above the normal rules of conduct. It’s actually hard to believe that someone of his obvious intelligence would do this without instinctively understanding the consequences. But there you go. Now a bidding war will start.

  26. Lawyer here, and from what I recall from law school GBH is best defined as “really serious bodily harm”. For a split lip to be GBH you’d need to be Mick Jagger.

    Loving all the “I wouldn’t go to A&E with a split lip” stuff above. Good to know we’ve some REAL men on here – rub some dirt on it and get on with it. That’s what I’d do if my boss punched me, in between cries of “thank you sir, may I have another”.

    At the end of the day, no one on here knows much about the incident or the injuries beyond high level info in the press. There’s very little point in dreaming up convenient extra detail (a la “he could have killed him/’twas but a scratch”) to support your POV, when the bare facts are that Clarkson is (physically, if not mentally) a grown man who hit a subordinate in the work place, and the victim (yes, victim) felt the need to see a doctor. One of these men deserves sympathy, the other deserved firing. The rest is for the birds.

    As for all the “well, Jezza will soon be making even more dough – he’s the big winner” stuff – I, for one, don’t care if he makes more money than god, he’s acted like a complete whopper here and it’s only sad that so many people (not on this blog, but elsewhere) are sufficiently blinded by their liking for him to turn daft cartwheels in his defence. Money is no substitute for decency.

    Oh, and my dough’s on Netflix.

    OOAA

  28. Why wasn’t he sacked?
    Surely the grounds were met to warrant his dismissal.
    But instead the BBC have bottled it, only stating that his contract will not be renewed when it expires next week. They would no doubt argue that this was a common sense solution, given that he could finish the remaining days of his contract while still suspended. But that’s not sacking him, is it?

  29. No matter how lucrative a deal he gets from Murdoch, Netflix or whoever, from this point on Clarkson moves from a mainstream to a niche audience. His semi retirement starts here.

  31. Of course he had to go. And, if the assault was unprovoked, the other guy should press charges and the police should investigate.

    Either we have a civilised society where assault on a person is illegal,

    Or

    We don’t and celebrities are judged to have immunity because they have a fan club of sycophants on facebook.

    Which is it ?

  34. Here’s the summary extract that describes the actual incident, from Ken MacQuarrie’s report:

    – The incident occurred on a patio area of the Simonstone Hall hotel, where
    Oisin Tymon was working on location for Top Gear.

    – The physical attack lasted around 30 seconds and was halted by the intervention of a witness.

    – It is the case that Oisin Tymon offered no retaliation.

    – The verbal abuse was directed at Oisin Tymon on more than one occasion – both during the attack and subsequently inside the hotel – and contained the strongest expletives and threats to sack him. The abuse was at such volume as to be heard in the dining room, and the shouting was audible in a hotel bedroom.

    – Derogatory and abusive language, relating to Oisin Tymon and other members of the Top Gear team, continued to be used by Jeremy Clarkson inside the hotel, in the presence of others, for a sustained period of time.

    – It is clear that Oisin Tymon was shocked and distressed by the incident, and believed that he had lost his job.

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/25/jeremy-clarkson-fracas-report-full-text-bbc-macquarrie

    Attempts to absolve Jeremy Clarkson on the grounds of ‘blokishness,’ or demean Oisin Tymon (further) on the grounds of ‘wimpishness’ are, to my sensibility, indefensible.

  36. He has not been sacked. His contract will simply not be renewed at the end of this month. That means that you and I, the taxpayer, are still paying his absurdly high salary, in return for ,,,nothing.

    If I hit someone at work, I’d be out on my ear straight away. Why haven’t the BBC sacked Clarkson?

    • A lot to Top Gear is pre-recorded. There may be very expensive film sections already in the can which aren’t ready for transmission – missing a voice-over perhaps, which require Clarkson’s input. It would cost the BBC, and us, more to scrap these than to keep him on for the last week of his contract.

    • They can’t sack him because he’s not an employee. BBC get his services via Bedder 6, the company Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman own. The BBC will probably be sued by the overseas buyers of Top Gear for the episodes not delivered – be interesting to see if Aunty seeks to recover those losses from Bedder 6.

      • the BBC bought out their shares in Bedder 6 in 2012 , thus acquiring the Top Gear franchise in its entirety – they had only 50% of it prior to that. Otherwise Clarkson, who now uses a different company for his affairs, could simply have taken the Top Gear name with him yesterday.

  37. If the crew kicked off every time they worked a long day with only a curly sandwich and a warm bottle of lager waiting for them at the Travelodge then no programmes would get made. Get Alan Carr to finish the series.

  39. Apologies for this unrelated and admittedly rather provocative observation, but: this discussion has had more ‘views’ in one day than any of the eight list threads in the Most Commented top 10 have managed in a week.

    Is The Afterword a restaurant which serves cold meat when what its patrons really want it steak?

  40. I feel very sorry for Oisin Tymon, who is the innocent victim in all this, yet has suffered widespread abuse, ranging from mild comments about his manhood, to death threats.

    I thought it was quite decent of Quentin Willson to stick up for him today.

  41. There can be no arguments? Well you’d think so but turns out The Times think differently. Their editorial today criticises the BBC for over reacting and, for no good reason, other than headmaster-like officiousness, cheating TV licence payers out of their right to enjoy Top Gear.

    It used to be a proper newspaper you know….

  42. Clarkson will get a pay rise.
    His audience will be 20% of what it currently is on a satellite channel.

    The Beeb won’t be able to recapture the ‘Top Gear’ audience (a tiny one, by the way, compared to fifty years ago).

    There will be an impasse.

    Clarkson will turn up on HIGNFY and/or The One Show in 2018.
    ‘Top Gear’ fronted by Clarkson will return to the Beeb in 2019.

    See also – David Beckham getting ‘dropped’ from the England football team / Kevin Pietersen never playing cricket for England again.
    The phrase ‘your time is up’ is a redundant one in Britain in the 21st Century…..unfortunately.

  45. I told you Clarkson would turn up on HIGNFY!!!

    However, the rapidity of it is staggering.
    Has anyone at the BBC actually got a pair?
    I thought it was only goldfish who supposedly forgot everything after four seconds!

    Still it figures – going from a show way past its sell-by date to, erm, a show way past its sell-by date.

    • He was booked to host way before the “fracas”. HIGNFY is produced by an independent company, Hat-trick so the BBC have no sway over who they have on it. Yes of course they could refuse to air it but that would be more petty than Clarkson himself.

      Plus Paul and Ian might wake up for the first time in years and give him a right shoeing

  46. ‘Booked’ to host, yes, but they hadn’t filmed it, and the BBC clearly, especially if they’ve just sacked someone, have a sway who appears on one of their main channels.
    Not as much when the Corporation was in rude health, I grant you, but this they could and should have nipped in the bud.

    Good luck with Paul Merton getting out of cruise control, on the few occasions I’ve seen the programme in the last 10 years his efforts have resembled a Wayne Rooney performance at a World Cup.

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