Would You Like Fries With That?

You would think a Spice Girl marrying an F1 Team boss would be big news.

But no.

I've only just spotted this Fox News story from 5 days ago and I hadn't heard it elsewhere.  Geri Halliwell is now engaged to Christian Horner, Red Bull boss.  Apparently they've announced it in The Times just like Benedict Cumberbatch did last week - that one was widely reported - I knew about that.

Maybe the F1 press are more concerned with the rather bad news about the smaller teams going into administration and worse.

The general motoring press have had a few interesting stories like this moron being quite rightly sent to jail for taking his girlfriend's car into a motor race.  An inexperienced driver like him could have caused total carnage.

Or there is the launch of Top Gear China.

I suppose I've not really looked for F1 stories since I stopped watching it.

 

Or maybe there is just less interest in F1 generally since the BBC did their dirty deal with Sky.

 

And I certainly don't follow showbiz gossip so maybe that's why I didn't know about Geri.  Maybe she's not famous any more - after all, I was fully aware of the truly awful news that S Club 7 are touring again.

 

And one of them seems to turned into Rutledge Wood.

Mini Fun

On the back of their excellent video to encourage Americans to drive manuals, Mini have now produced this fun albeit very surreal little film... Thanks to Autoguide.com for covering the story of a competition won by a Rutledge Wood look-a-like to sum up the perfect test drive in six words. Mini then made the video based on his entry of:

Stewardess, Salt Flats, Paratroopers, Sushi and Falconer

The amazing thing, though, is that it actually makes the pig-ugly Mini Coupe look really good. It must be a colour thing because all the ones used in the early reviews were white with a red roof and looked awful.

Incidentally, I'd have gone with:

Nigella, A483, Tranmere Rovers, Bacon and Marillion

Top Gear USA

"It's like being aroused with a gun pointing at you."

BBC Three showed the first edition of Top Gear USA this weekend - or, as it's called over there, Top Gear. I knew there had to be a good reason for BBC Three existing.

It has the same basic format as the orginal (and best!) version with 3 middling aged blokes and a Stig. Their Stig seems less of a mythical creature though.

They still have "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" but they call it "Big Star, Small Car". Their big star was Buzz Aldrin but the interview was very poor - it just seemed to be them listing previous cars he had owned then showing his lap. He seemed to have some trouble finding fifth which implies they are using a manual - this flies on the face of my earlier posting, Automatic For The (American) People. I suppose that they may do what the British version does and have a second, automatic car that can be used with guests who can't use a stick-shift.

Their presenters have much stranger names than ours:

Tanner Foust seems to be their equivalent of Richard Hammond.








Rutledge Wood must be the James May equivalent because he isn't the Richard Hammondy one and he isn't the front man. Also, if you type "Rutledge Wood" into Google Images, on the third row of the results, you get a picture of James.




This leaves the one that concerns me a bit:

Adam Ferrara. He is described as a "renowned petrolhead" which always rings alarm bells for me. When it comes to presenters of car shows, I have always believed that the best ones need to have a racing or motoring journalism background - Adam is a stand-up and a comedy actor. He does have a relatively normal name though.

It's still early days yet and the banter seemed quite forced. The jury is still out. They will need time to gel and establish a pecking order. I'm guessing this must have happened because they are on Season 2 over The Pond. I'll certainly keep watching with interest.