Steve Coogan responds to Top Gear comments

Top Gear’s offensive stereotyping has gone too far, says Steve Coogan in The Guardian in response to the presenters recent comments. Coogan believes that comedy can’t always be safe, and sometimes entertainers need to challenge social orthodoxies. But ‘saying the unsayable’ is different from simply recycling offensive cliches about Mexicans. Here is a little from his column:

As a huge fan of Top Gear. I normally regard the presenters’ brand of irreverence as a part of the rough and tumble that goes with having a sense of humour. I’ve been on the show three times and had a go at their celebrity-lap challenge, and I would love to receive a fourth invite. But I think that’s unlikely once they have read this. If, however, it makes the Lads question their behaviour for a second – ambitious, I know – it will be worth it.

I normally remain below the parapet when these frenetic arguments about comedy and taste break out. But this time, I’ve had enough of the regular defence you tend to hear – the tired line that it’s “just a laugh”, a bit of “harmless fun”.

Some of the Lads’ comments again, in case you missed them. “Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat” (Richard Hammond). Mexican food is “sick with cheese on it” (James May).

Read the rest here.

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman

Jeremy Clarkson has written an interesting column about the over-reaction to the actions of one or two people. He believes that “we seem to have lost sight of the fact that throughout history 90% of people have behaved quite normally 90% of the time” and that “we must start to accept that 5% of the population at any given time is bonkers”. Read the rest on Times Online.

As we know, one man once got on one plane in a pair of exploding hiking boots and as a result everyone else in the entire world is now forced to strip naked at airports and hand over their toiletries to a man in a high-visibility jacket.

In other words, the behaviour of one man has skewed the concept of everyday life for everyone else. And we are seeing this all the time.

Last month a Birmingham couple pleaded guilty to starving their supposedly home-schooled daughter to death. Now, of course, there are calls for parents who choose to educate their children at home to be monitored on an hourly basis by people from the “care” industry, and possibly to have their toiletries confiscated.

Read the rest here.

Clarkson in hot water

We looked at a Jeremy Clarkson column last week and it is no surprise to see that the Top Gear presenter has got himself in trouble again. He is under fire for his comments about British PM Gordon Brown and has had to apologise. The scourge of political correctness called Mr Brown a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”. Clarkson has caused offence on many fronts with his remark. Calling the Prime Minister an idiot is not the most clever political insult but calling him one-eyed although technically true, attacks his disability and it is in very bad taste. Clarkson has also managed to insult a whole nation by denigrating Gordon Brown for being Scottish.

Here’s a link to another of his columns on Times Online –

The world will never be safe until Scrabble is banned.

First, fairy cakes-then welding, kids

The start of school is thundering towards us and for Year 13 that will mean having to come to grips with the writing standard. One of the first tasks you will undertake is writing a column. To help you with that, I will add links to examples of columns so that you begin to understand the form. First up is Jeremy Clarkson and he is discussing education in a column entitled ‘First, fairy cakes-then welding, kids’. If you are a fan of his writing and his television show ‘Top Gear’ you will know what to expect. Here is an extract –

“Since it came to power, the Labour government has introduced 2,685 pieces of legislation every year. And each has been either ill-conceived, draconian, bonkers, bitter, dangerous, counter-productive, childish, wrong, thoughtless, selfish, or designed primarily to make life a bit more miserable for everyone except six people in the BBC, 14 on The Guardian and Al Gore.

Still, with such a torrent of new rules and regulations pouring onto the statute books every day, it was statistically inevitable that one day they’d accidentally do something sensible. And last week that day arrived.

They decided that everyone who’s capable of reaching the takeaway shop without being shot in the face is eating far too much Trex and that the way to get them eating fair-trade lettuce and organic tofu instead is to make cooking a part of the school curriculum for children aged 11-14.

Immediately head teachers came up with all sorts of objections. They didn’t have the space for normal lessons so where would they find the room for cookery classes? Had they considered, perhaps, using the school’s kitchen?

Then the health and safety nutters woke up. “Aha,” they said, “PE has to be taken by someone with a degree in sports paramedicry and similarly qualified people would be necessary for cooking classes or children would be going home with knives sticking out of their eyes and pans of boiling water on their heads.”

Read the rest at Timesonline.

Top Wits

From The Times

It is not often that Liam Gallagher and Jeremy Clarkson appear in a list with Noël Coward and Shakespeare. But according to a new survey they are among Britain’s wittiest individuals.

The top ten places in the poll all went to men. The highest-ranking woman was Baroness Thatcher, at number 12, who once remarked: “Being powerful is like being a lady – if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

The top spot went to Oscar Wilde, who once claimed that “to disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity”. He was not known for his modesty and, for once, would probably have been happy to agree with the verdict of all 3,000 people surveyed for the digital television channel Dave TV.

Few would argue that the Dublin-born playwright, who spent much of his life in England, was the master of the clever quip. Even on his deathbed in 1900, he is alleged to have said: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”

Spike Milligan, the Goon Show creator who took second place in the poll, delivered his final witty one-liner from beyond the grave. He died in 2002 after specifying that his tombstone should carry the line: “I told you I was ill”.

Stephen Fry, in third place, is the highest-placed wit who has not yet met his maker. He played Wilde in the 1997 film of that name and once quoted him when passing through customs at an airport, announcing: “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”

The comedian, actor and quiz-show host, once said that animal testing was cruel because “they get nervous and get all the answers wrong”.

Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter and newspaper columnist, is a more surprising entry at number four.

His caustic comments have earned him a fan-base beyond those who care about the vehicles he reviews. He is not noted for his eco-friendliness and once said: “We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an EM Forster novel.”

Read the rest of the article here.