Top Near?

With the departure of Jeremy, lots of questions are being asked about the future of Top Gear.

• What will happen to the unshown episodes?
• Will it continue?
• Who would present it?
• What will Jeremy do next?
• What will Richard & James do next?
• Why am I asking these questions?

I'll take the last one first.  Top Gear has a lot of fans and Jeremy's contract was not renewed after his "fracas" - I went into more detail not long after it happened.  In that, I speculated that Jodie Kidd would be a good replacement - break up the testosterone a bit.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What will happen to the unshown episodes?

They will be shown - or the already-filmed bits will anyway.

Will it continue?


Yes.

Who would present it?


Well, now isn't that the interesting bit?  This would hinge on whether we were just replacing Jeremy or replacing all three presenters. (I'm not including The Stig in this because he has been replaced at least twice and nobody really cared.)

If it was a straight-swap for Jeremy - middle-aged grumpy white bloke - then I would give the job without question to Jason Plato - I love hearing his quotes when something has gone wrong for him in the BTCC.

Today, however, James has been speaking to The Guardian and basically ruled himself out of appearing in Top Gear without Jeremy.  This would probably mean that Richard would do the same.

So we need three new presenters.  Channel controller Kim Shillinglaw has the job of finding these presenters - and she may be inclined to go along the female route.

My dream team in this case would be Sabine Schmitz, Jodie Kidd & Vicki Butler-Henderson.

Looks like former presenter Angela Rippon has thrown her name into the ring (not to be confused with "The 'Ring" which is where Sabine Schmitz made her name) - I can remember Angie as a Top Gear presenter but that was when it was a sensible car show.

Sue Perkins is another name linked with the job - in fact the bookmakers had her down as favourite - I don't know why - she has shown no interest in cars whatsoever as far as I know.  Sue then became the victim of all sorts of threats from various morons unhappy about the idea - I concur wholeheartedly with James' response.

I hope Kim will be casting these roles to people who do actually have an interest in cars, though.  In fact, I hope Andy Wilmin, the show's producer, has the final say.

What will Jeremy do next?


Another car show.

What will Richard & James do next?

Another car show - possibly with Jeremy.  They will probably also still be contracted to the BBC for their other projects (Total Wipeout, Manlab etc.) even though their Top Gear contracts have expired.  This could prevent them doing "Clarkson, May & Hammond" on Sky TV - for a while at least.  James sees the door still open for a return of the three of them with Top Gear on the BBC in the future - I don't see any legal reasons why not but I just don't envisage it.

They could remake Last of The Summer Wine though.

A lot has happened since these youngish men...

 ...became these oldish men...

And I'm sure the story isn't over yet.

The Guardian had the scoop interview with James today.

They also had this suggestion which I like a lot.  A heck of a lot.  Click on it.  Think regeneration Doctor Who style.

  Top Marx.

Good Evans!

Looks like the Mail now has a new motoring correspondent - Chris Evans.  Don't worry if that video doesn't play - it'll be browser settings or something technical but you're not missing much.

I don't know if James "Formlia 1" Martin has got the push or not but, reading Chris Evans' first piece - a review of the Subaru BRZ - I don't think it will make much difference to me.

I like reading about cars and if The Mail want celebrities to write about cars, then it is best if they are petrol-heads but, unless there is an element of humour (like Alexei Sayle in the Telegraph - although I'll stop reading him after they disappear behind a paywall) then I prefer my articles to be written by motoring journos or racers.

Now, that's not to say he doesn't do a bad job, I'll certainly continue to read his pieces where I rarely read Martin's.  It is self-deprecating and there are a few interesting facts in there about Subaru - like Subaru is the Japanese name for the constellation Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) but only has six of them on its badge.

 So far, the Mail readers seem quite indifferent to Chris.

Two days later, there have only been 11 comments added to the article - they seem fairly evenly mixed about as to whether or not he is better than Martin and I'm ashamed to say that I have to agree with some Daily Mail readers - specifically the two who picked up on his use of the word "she" to describe the car.

"It" - the word is "It", not "she!"

That story has still achieved 11 more comments than this one that has been up for four days but that may be because

"We are no longer accepting comments on this article."  I suspect that they never started accepting comments on the article - that way, some of the more homophobic Mail readers would not get a chance to air their prejudices.

 

This is the story of Karis Smith, pictured right, who bears a striking facial resemblance to Michael McIntyre and happens to be a lesbian.

 

Why is that relevant?

 

The Michael McIntyre bit isn't but the lesbian bit is.

 

Karis has started up a driving school in Manchester that is gay-friendly after hearing various tales of unfriendly and downright discriminatory treatment meted out by certain driving instructors.  It seems that transgender learners had particular problems feeling they were expected to explain their gender and sexuality.

 

The article continues "Some of the complaints made to Karis were issues such as constantly having to use ‘non-gender’ pronouns when chatting with their instructor, mentioning their 'partner' rather than girlfriend or boyfriend."

 

This is when you can use words like "she".

How to Drive (...Telegraph Readers Mad).

Part 2 of what promises to be an amusing series of articles appeared in The Telegraph motoring section today.

Ed Cummins, a 25-Year-old Telegraph journalist is learning to drive.

He writes about it in an amusing way - at least I find it amusing.

Some others do not.

Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

I don't think he is being particularly honest about his lessons - he is playing it for mild comedy - which is fine by me - but some Telegraph readers don't seem to appreciate it - it's probably the same lot who complain about Alexei Sayle writing for The Telegraph. As I've mentioned before, I love the fact they get wound up.

The first comment, by someone calling himself cpf99, is actually very constructive making some good points about how Ed could have made more of modern teaching techniques and he also makes the obvious point that Ed is probably getting a freebie here in return for plugging The AA Driving School.

After that, though, it's the usual Telegraph-reader-who-doesn't-get-the-joke fodder and one deluded person called steveleeoflondon who wants us to believe that "When I was 10 I watched my dad carefully all the way to our holiday destination and worked out what the pedals did and how the gears work etc. When we got to the other end I asked him if I could try driving on the half mile long private road which formed part of our destination. I jumped in, adjusted the seat then drove using all the (4) gears, stopped, did a three point turn and drove it back and parked it. Easy."

He'll probably tell you he went on be World Rally Champ and taught Lewis Hamilton how to drive.

That's Telegraph readers for you.

Left, Right?

Back at the start of Summer, I posted about Alexei Sayle becoming a motoring correspondent with The Daily Telegraph.I think I don't particularly like his motoring writing - his latest piece, on the Paris Motor Show, is quite short and quite vague. It does, however, really wind up a small number of Telegraph readers who like to vent their spleen in the comments section. This amuses me very much and I enjoy their annoyance.

I have made the point myself in the past that the better motoring columns tend to be found in the more obnoxious right-wing media - Fox News, The Telegraph and The Mail.

But, then again, I hadn't really looked in the left-wing media.

So I took a look in The Mirror.

I did find two of my favourite correspondents, Richard Hammond & Quentin Willson. But overall, it is quite a disappointing site and very rarely updated - it's had the same couple of stories including one about an electric car called "The Lightning" on its header for at least three weeks now - and some very intrusive advertising.

Socialist Worker doesn't appear to have a motoring section.

I think they should.

Now, who on Earth could they possibly get to be their star guest motoring correspondent?

'Ullo John, Gotta New Motoring Correspondent?

The very right-wing Telegraph now has a very left-wing motoring correspondent. I commented a while back how James May's regular Telegraph column seemed to have fizzled out and I had noticed that Alexei Sayle's picture had been regularly appearing there.

I had figured that he had just done one interview for them (an item on the electric Citroën C-Zero - a car identical to the Mitsubishi i-Miev that I disliked so much earlier this month)

If I'd been a bit more observant, I'd have noticed that there has actually been a new piece from him every month since this March.

The Telegraph try and justify Alexei's presence to their readership with an interview rounding off the rough edges and headlined in a way to have a dig at Labour.

But they don't have to justify anything to me. I've been a fan of Alexei right back to The Young Ones days - I love his downright daft take on life and will be regularly checking in here for a comedic take on motoring.

Hang on a mo' though - if I want a comedic take on motoring - I need to be checking in here!