I do like a bit of close to the edge humour, but even I was shocked at the truck-driving segment of last night’s first episode of the new Top Gear series.
During a truck-driving challenge segment one Mr J Clarkson made repeated referrals to lorry drivers murdering prostitutes; presumably it was an allusion to Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper and the recent murders of sex workers committed by an Ipswich lorry driver.
Haha, how very droll I thought; no doubt HGV drivers watching are equally underwhelmed.
Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has prompted more than 500 people to complain to the BBC about a joke he made on Sunday’s motoring show.
Clarkson, 48, was taking part in a lorry-driving task, when he joked about lorry drivers killing sex workers.
“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day,”
he said.
The BBC said the joke had made “ridiculous an unfair urban myth”.
Lorry driver Steve Wright was jailed in February for killing five prostitutes in Ipswich.
Clarkson’s joke, made before the watershed, has now sparked 517 complaints.
But a BBC spokesman said that by Monday morning – before the incident had been reported on by newspapers and websites – there had been 188 complaints.
Sunday’s programme, which aired on BBC Two at 2000 GMT, was watched by around seven million viewers.
In a statement, the BBC said: “The vast majority of Top Gear viewers have clear expectations of Jeremy Clarkson’s long-established and frequently provocative on-screen persona. I think it’s a sacking offence to make light of the murder of anybody, never mind prostitute women who are vulnerable and criminalised .
“This particular reference was used to comically exaggerate and make ridiculous an unfair urban myth about the world of lorry driving, and was not intended to cause offence.”
No, it never is, is it?
This will no doubt be spun as another Ross/Brand-type media-manufactured attack on the BBC, but while not denying there was an increase in volume of complaints following media interest, nevertheless the complaints are entirely justified; Clarkson’s ‘joke’ was crass, puerile and just not funny. Making a joke of murder is bad enough but why pick on lorry-drivers? John Wayne Gacy was a part-time clown; does that make all clowns potential monsters?
Oh. Maybe better not to answer that one.
Nevertheless to traduce women, sex workers and lorry drivers in one brief, dumbass sentence takes a special type of Clarksonian insensitivity – the boorish, classic car driving, act like it’s still 1953 and your kind still rule the empire type of insensitivity. He’s not got very good antennae for modernity or shifts in the zetgeist, has he? Yes, we do expect that of him and it is part of his well-established persona: but that doesn’t mean he gets to be a complete arse on the public’s penny without somebody objecting.
Prostitutes and lorry drivers pay the license fee (and his grossly overinflated 2million in annual wages) too.
[*Why a banana?]
Michel
November 4, 2008 at 3:36 pm> Making a joke of murder is bad enough but why pick on lorry-drivers?
Now come on…
They were doing a piece about driving a lorry on a motoring program, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If you’re going to make a joke while doing that, even if it’s in bad taste, it’s bound to be about lorry drivers, not clowns.
I’m getting tired about the nearly continuous spectacle of outrage about people who are OFFENDED by anything, and all the hypersensitive natter that follows. It’s a mixed bag of cultures and opinions, this western world, people are bound to get offended by something, it’s a fact of life, get used to it. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
And yes, clowns really are monsters.
Palau
November 6, 2008 at 4:58 amI certainly didn’t complain to the BBC and wouldn’t have complained about something so trivial; but I did notice and did think it was painfully unfunny, especially given what had taken place in the past week or so re the BBC and insensitive jokes.
I can forgive any amount of outrage if I think it’s funny, but it just wasn’t. I would not be surprised if Clarkson’s little bit of extemporising wasn’t in the script and the production people were pressured into giving way to the talent.
I don’t disagree with you about all the complaining and hypersensitive nattering: it is bloody annoying. But I think it’s a necessary safety-valve in what you describe as ‘a western world where people are bound to get offended by something.’
If there’s no legitimate, democratic way of expressing it, continuing petty outrage can turn bitter and violent, as the western world knows to its recent cost.
Maybe that’s why clowns turn evil – they’re tired of bushleague comics and obscure bloggers taking the piss and they’re not taking it any more…