That notorious TOP GEAR ‘fracas’: what REALLY happened
Clarkson and crew: what really happened?
The dining room, Simonstone Hall, North Yorkshire, 10pm. Enter Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond and the Top Gear production team
May: Jesus Christ, I’m f------ starving!
Clarkson: Language, James! (He rattles a collection tin for Tsunami Relief in Asia. May puts in a pound, grumbling.)
Hammond: (Sits at a table and clicks his fingers at a waiter stacking plates.) Oi, Luigi, three sirloin steaks with fondant potatoes, pan-fried wild mushrooms, grilled cherry tomatoes and pink peppercorn sauce. (To the barman) Oh, and while you’re at it, Pierre, retreat to the cellar and get us three jeroboams of Beaucastel 2012 Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Chop, chop, pal. Where’d you go to catering college – Mexico?
Clarkson: Steady on, Hamster, that’s just the sort of talk that proves we need legislation against discrimination in the workplace. Besides, I’ve warned you before about your cholesterol. (Looks at menu.) I’ll just have the raw cauliflower salad with cumin and quinoa, please, and a glass of lukewarm tap water. Is the bread gluten-free? Sorry to ask, but I’m intolerant. Ha ha – of wheat, I mean. And do serve the crew first. (Points at 16 producers, cameramen, sound recordists, make-up women and The Stig, all crowded round a table for three.) They’ve had a tough day, poor loves. I still don’t see why we can’t all sit together.
May: No f------ way… I mean – er, it’s a BBC thing. Something about demarcation between front-of-camera and back office… Er, just popping outside for a smoke.
Clarkson: Tsk, roll on plain packaging for tobacco, I say. Such a shame to see a man enslaved to toxins. It’s like sucking on an exhaust pipe, you know? At least, until electric cars finally end the tyranny of the combustion engine.
The restaurant door slams open, accompanied by a clap of thunder and a dark, saturnine figure bounds into the room: it is Danny Cohen, the BBC’s head of television.
Cohen: That’s enough of that sort of dangerous talk, Clarkson! What if someone heard you? Don’t you realise Top Gear is worth £50million to the BBC in overseas sales? And a helluva lot more as a Right-wing figleaf to cover the kind of bien-pensant, pantywaist-liberal programming me and my friends like to talk about in Shoreditch House, and that consequently I am flooding the airwaves with.
Clarkson: I know, I know, Mr Cohen, but I’m tired of the charade. The perverse, tyre-sniffing fetishisation of completely impractical modes of transport. The playground machismo and Seventies saloon-bar sexism. I can’t carry on as this pantomime character the BBC has trapped me into playing since 1988 by promising to fund my wind-up mobility-scooter charity in
Vietnam.
Cohen (sneering): Yes, who’d have thought – Clarkson, the wind-up merchant! Well, if you want those little kids to be able to carry on trundling to the rice paddies, or whatever they have in Hanoi, you’d better step back in line. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your escape attempts! Those eeny-meeny-miny attempts to infringe BBC guidelines and get yourself sacked! Don’t you realise that at the Beeb you can pretty much get away with murder? Just look at Snog, Marry, Avoid, which I put on BBC Three! As long as I back you, there’s no escape. Know what the funniest two words are in public-service broadcasting? “Final warning”.
Clarkson (almost in tears): Please, Danny, please. Please don’t make me drive a Pagani Zonda through the slums of Caracas, while lighting a cigar with a sheaf of burning banknotes. You wouldn’t believe the noise! Please don’t make me banter with Gary Lineker about the cornering ability of the Renault Mégane turbo. It’s souldestroying. I crave a simple life. A yoga mat to sleep on. A few hours’ quiet meditation a day. I want to sell those ridiculous, huge houses, and my Chelsea season ticket, and move to a yurt on the south coast. I’ve even been taking some clowning workshops.
Waiter: Sorry, sirs, I’m afraid the chef has gone home, and all we can offer you are a cold collation, some soup or these three large custard pies, which I’ve brought out to show you.
May and Hammond: Eugh, f-----foreign muck.
Clarkson: Perfect! Let me show you one of the clowning routines I’ve been practising with Oisin the producer. Much more entertaining than stupid cars. Clarkson goes to push a pie into the willing Oisin Tymon’s face, but at the last minute The Stig snatches it out of his hand and trips Clarkson up so that the presenter gives Tymon a gentle push, which The Stig captures on his phone.
Clarkson: Oh no! Contact! I am so sorry to have invaded your personal space. But Tymon is removing a mask to reveal the smiling face of David Cameron underneath, and The Stig takes off his helmet to reveal he is… George Osborne. Cameron: Don’t worry, Jeremy, it’s all part of the plan. You might be able to get away with sexism and racist abuse on the BBC, but an assault is another matter. And if that doesn’t get you sacked, I plan to go on television and claim you “as a friend and a huge talent”, which should do the trick.
Cohen: Bah, foiled!
Clarkson: You mean I’m free? Cameron: Not quite. With the election coming in May, we in the Conservative Party need popular figures who appear to have the common touch, but who went to proper schools. People like you, Jeremy. And James Blunt – as we speak, Theresa May is engaged in a honeytrap operation to get him. It would be most unwise to say no, Jeremy – we could make things very difficult for you. So say yes, Jeremy: we’ve picked out a nice safe seat near Chipping Norton, and I can promise you a ministerial post. Think of it. Lots of foreign travel, Michelinstarred dinners, limousines all the way…
Clarkson (falling to his knees and raising his fists to the sky): Noooooo!