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Fantastic series again. Aye, they do blatantly set things up (Lemar for example was clearly playing along) but they don't half make it entertaining. Clarkson driving that Limo round central London and getting stuck at every turn was Gold I tells you.

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Aye I think Lemar was just going along with it. These series always seem to be over just as they have started!

 

I think he was just being a prick :D

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that billy piper seemed a bit odd

 

We all reckoned she looked like she was on something. Definite face chewing going on. She may just have been nervous, but surely everyone else noticed the inordinate amount of twitching around the mouth area?

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that billy piper seemed a bit odd

 

We all reckoned she looked like she was on something. Definite face chewing going on. She may just have been nervous, but surely everyone else noticed the inordinate amount of twitching around the mouth area?

 

She seems to have far too many teeth, can't say I'd noticed that before. And yes there did seem to be some amount of paranoia and fidgetiness / twitchiness

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Motormouth: Johnny Vaughan

We need speed, Auntie

 

In Top Gun, Maverick high-fives Goose and proudly declares: “I feel the need, the need for speed,” before climbing into the cockpit of a multi-million-dollar F-14 and blasting off. When he says this he is reassuring the world that military air dee-fence is just an irksome technicality: he’s flying jets because he’s just a normal bloke, and normal blokes “feel the need, the need for speed”.

 

This is why, when Ice accuses Mav of being a selfish and reckless adrenaline junkie, it is Ice who we mark down as the “wrong ’un”, and not the thrill-seeker with a big ego endangering the lives of others.

 

I remembered this last Sunday at the end of the latest series of Top Gear. This was the series that will be remembered for kicking off by showing Richard Hammond’s near-300mph crash in a dragster. When Hammond went for that final, entirely gratuitous, nearly fatal run he did so because he too felt “the need for speed”.

 

If he hadn’t crashed, his final run wouldn’t have been accused of being any more reckless an act than if John Noakes had done a “my day as a drag racer” piece for Blue Peter back in the 1970s. He would have been another bloke enjoying a wholesome “need for speed” activity. He’d have gone home, buzzing and bouncing off the walls with excitement, and told Mrs Hammond about his day of high-speed highs, and that would have been that.

 

As it was, a front tyre blew out — an event outside his control — and he crashed. Suddenly the public was holding its breath for hospital updates while the media debated the futures of health and safety policy, the show, daredevil television stunts, and use of NHS resources. The debate, blame-passing and finger-pointing would have continued and gathered momentum, I’m sure, but his rapid and full recovery was a story packed with so much good that the bad didn’t stand a chance.

 

A few weeks later he was back in the Top Gear hangar reminiscing with the chaps and laughing at both the memory and the footage. The bravado was similar, I’m sure, to that of the fighter pilots who used the same hangar back in 1942 when it was first built. Flippant banter masking a genuine warmth and relief at the safe return of a missing comrade. “Hamster pranged his kite, poor blighter — no broken bones though”; “Nasty biff on the old noggin, though”; “Well, that won’t matter — silly bugger couldn’t get any dafter.”

 

Hammond had been satisfying his need for speed in a jet car, others do it riding a 30ft swell off Maui, or Base jumping from a suspension bridge, or hurtling down the Cresta run at 94mph clad in latex. The activities vary, as do the skills they require, the danger they entail and the intensity of the thrill generated.

 

How many television shows deliver this kind of excitement? Go on . . . count them. Run out of fingers yet? I don’t think so. It’s a shame, then, and a little puzzling, that there is no scheduled date for a new series of Top Gear. There are rumours it will be back in the summer but no firm plans.

 

I understand this is because of internal machinations at the BBC. I don’t understand the complexities but what I do know is that Michael Grade, the new boss at ITV, is desperate to bulldoze out some of the game shows and reality TV cluttering up his channels and bring in new, quality programming. I’m sure he’d like nothing better than to build ITV’s Sunday night schedule around a new version of Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson as anchor.

 

If Auntie can’t stand the excitement any longer, maybe it’s time to let someone else take the wheel.

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'The BBC announcer after last sundays show said 'Top Gear will be back in the Summer'.. I can tell you now, it wont be.'

 

Is what it said at the end of Clarksons column in the Sun..

 

EDIT.. I should really read the thread, and click links before posting :baby:

Edited by Thompson
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