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Jeremy Clarkson, the controversial presenter of the popular TV show Top Gear, was suspended by the BBC after a “fracas” with a producer, the British company said.
Clarkson (54) aided the automobile show to become the most-watched TV programme in history, with more than 350-million viewers every week in 170, according to the Guinness World Records.
BBC said that only Jeremy Clarkson was suspended after the “fracas” with the producer and that an investigation on the case is ongoing. It seems that the presenter “allegedly hit a producer”. It seems that the next two Top Gear episodes will not be aired, and the third one, which was scheduled to be the last of the series, is unlikely to be broadcast.
The fans reacted immediately to the news and set up a petition to the BBC to reinstate Clarkson to the show. It rapidly gained more than 125.000 signatures.
Jeremy Clarkson wrote an ironic tweet in February, which revealed some troubles whiting the show. “Wanted: new presenter for Top Gear. Applicant should be old, badly dressed and pedantic but capable of getting to work on time,” he wrote at the time.
It is not the first time that the controversial presenter is involved in a scandal. While Top Gear is one of the BBC’s biggest earners and brands, the series was often hit by slander. In 2014, a year described by the executive producer Andy Wilman as “an annus horribilis”, the show was involved in an incident in which the crew was driven out of Argentina, and also faced racism accusations.
The Argentinian scandal started from a license plate of one of the cars the three co-hosts of “Top Gear” drove through the South American country – H982 FKL -, which some considered to be a reference to the Falklands War, fought in 1982 between Britain and Argentina. The incident culminated with stones thrown by an angry mob at the crew, but BBC said the registration plate was not meant to be provocative.
Jeremy Clarkson was accused of using “offensive racial terms” in an episode on Myanmar, when he used the world “slope”, which is slang for an Asian person. The broadcasting regulator Ofcom said the term was offensive and that BBC shouldn’t have broadcast it.
Top Gear’s depictions of Albanians, Romanians and Germans were also considered offensive, and the BBC apologized the country of Mexico after the show described its inhabitants as “feckless” and “lazy”.
Image Source: BBC
