Time for a change of gear, Jeremy…

AYorkshire journalist and motoring writer John Blunt, writing for the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, argues that it’s high time that ‘Auntie BBC’ took her naughty nephew Jeremy Clarkson to one side and gave him a good talking-to about his apparent need for speed….


I used to look forward to Top Gear – not any more.

The producers of the BBC’s flagship motoring programme have taken it in a totally new direction. The format is a strange hybrid of a chat show, a top shelf boy racer’s magazine and a computer car racing game. The result is that responsible public service broadcasting takes a back seat to populism.

The studio appears to be a hangar surrounded by a well-used test track streaked with enough burnt rubber to gladden the hearts of Dunlop and Pirelli shareholders.

The show is still anchored by Rotherham’s redoubtable Mr Clarkson and the top item of interest is to find which ‘C-list’ celebrity can clock the fastest lap in a mainstream family saloon.

Similarly, the Top Gear team is happy to squander valuable airtime by showing groups of grannies how to do handbrake turns and tyre-smoking ‘doughnuts,’ not the sort on sale at the local WI bring-and-buy.

For me, Top Gear hit a new low when it road tested a £200,000 Bentley Arnage – the latest ‘family runabout’ selected by Mr and Mrs David Beckham. Instead of celebrating this glorious example of British automotive craftsmanship, intended as a mile-munching grand tourer for the favoured few, it was incongruously subjected to the Santa Pod drag strip treatment just to prove, as if we ever doubted it, the raw power of the supercharged engine lurking under the car’s elegant bonnet.

As clouds of white tyre smoke spewed from the tail, the gleefully puerile voiceover was along the lines of ‘look at us lads going joyriding in a rich man’s car.’ A great example to impressionable young viewers and would-be car thieves.

It’s not that I dislike Jeremy Clarkson as a presenter; he’s at his best delivering quirky documentaries and xenophobic rants against the eccentricities of our Continental cousins. But put him behind a steering wheel and it seems the hooligan takes over and has to live up to his bad boy image.

I dare say anybody who criticises him will be branded a motoring killjoy. Well, just for the record, I’m not. I’m an enthusiastic, press-on but cost conscious driver lucky enough to have been taught to drive sensibly on a racetrack.

You quickly realise that the secret of good lap times is not burying the loud pedal into the Wilton; it’s all about using the controls gently, keeping the car balanced, reading the road ahead and being aware of what’s happening around you. In fact, not bad techniques for the public roads.

The departures of Tiff Needell and Quentin Willson from Top Gear to Channels 4 and 5, respectively, marked the loss of a mature, restraining, informative influence on the programme. Or so I thought until I saw Tiff Needell’s report on Fifth Gear about illegal street racing in California. Not content simply to watch, he just had to take part.

Producers of TV motoring programmes have a golden opportunity to address some of the major safety issues on our roads today, such as the menace of tailgating, driver fatigue and speeding. That they choose not to do so is a sad reflection on their judgement of what many of their viewers – more than they think – would like to see. So come on Jeremy, now’s your chance… "