The axe has finally fallen on Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter of ‘Top Gear’, BBC’s most popular programme that has an estimated worldwide viewership of 350 million.
BBC’s director general Tony Hall’s announcement on Wednesday that Mr. Clarkson’s contract would not be renewed this month was not unexpected, as this is not the first time that the brash presenter has raked up controversy for his abrasive, and on occasion unapologetically racist, comments.
Mr. Hall’s announcement came after an internal investigation by Ken MacQuarrie, director of BBC Scotland, following an “unprovoked physical attack” by Mr. Clarkson on a Top Gear producer.
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“For me, a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations,” Mr. Hall said.
Mr. Clarkson was suspended pending investigation on March 10 for an unprovoked physical attack on Oisin Tymon, a ‘Top Gear’ producer at a hotel in Yorkshire for not arranging for hot food after a day’s filming. The physical attack was accompanied by verbal abuse that “contained the strongest expletives and threat to sack Mr. Tymon.” The injured producer had to be treated in hospital for his injuries.
More than a million people signed an online petition calling for the reinstatement of Mr. Clarkson who has presented ‘Top Gear’ together with James May and Richard Hammond since 2003. The show is one of the BBC’s biggest hits, with overseas sales worth an estimated £50m a year for the corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.
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Mr. Clarkson has been at his most offensive and provocative while filming episodes of his programme abroad.
Last year, he and his team were filming a two-part South America special, and were forced to make a hurried exit from Argentina after protests by war veterans who were incensed over the Top Gear’s use of a car with a Falklands number plate.
Mr. Clarkson’s language just seemed to get worse, despite all the criticism he attracted. His racist reference to a Burmese man while shooting in Myanmar last year, and his more recent use in the United Kingdom of an explicitly racist word are cases in point.
The Daily Mirror claimed that Mr. Clarkson was heard chanting the nursery rhyme “eeny-meeny-miny-moe,” and then completing the next line of the rhyme sotto-voce using the offensive N-word.
In India during a shoot in 2011 he made a series of disparaging comments on life in the subcontinent, ending his visit by a drive through a city slum in a Jaguar fitted with a toilet which he said was “perfect for India.”