BBC ‘has lost a genius’ in Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson

Top Gear’s former executive producer has said the BBC has lost an “editorial genius” in Jeremy Clarkson, calling their decision to axe him from the show a “tragedy”.

Andy Wilman, who has just quit the long-running series in the wake of Clarkson’s departure, has written an article for the latest issue of Top Gear magazine, telling the story of how the motor show came to be developed in its current form by the outspoken presenter, who was sacked following a “fracas” with a producer.

Wilman’s decision to quit came as he was pictured with his former Top Gear presenters in London. It was the first time they have been seen together since the show was axed and has fuelled speculation they are planning their next move in broadcasting, with Netflix and Amazon being tipped as favourites to showcase their new motoring show.

Wilman revealed that around 2001, the then controller of BBC2, Jane Root, had decided to axe Top Gear, so Clarkson arranged to meet him to discuss his ideas to revive the show.

He wrote: “And as I sit here now in April 2015, in a completely empty office, I think that faraway lunch absolutely encapsulates the tragedy of what the BBC has lost in getting rid of Jeremy.

“It hasn’t just lost a man who can hold viewers’ attention in front of a camera, it’s lost a journalist who could use the discipline of print training to focus on what mattered and what didn’t; it’s lost an editorial genius who could look at an existing structure and then smash it up and reshape it in a blaze of light-bulb moments.”

Wilman said that while searching for presenters, the BBC were “adamant a woman should be in the line-up”: “Their theory behind a female presenter was that if you want women to watch something, you need women presenting it.”

Wilman said he and Clarkson “auditioned lots of excellent girls who were more than up to the job of presenting a car show, but Jeremy and I had already started to realise that bloke banter was going to become an important part of the show”.

And so on their insistence, Root allowed them to have an all male line-up.

Wilman also recalled how Richard Hammond’s original audition tape featured him “doing a terrible car review while dressed for some reason as Batman”.

And he said after their idea of using an anonymous racing driver in a helmet to test drive the cars but never speak on camera, Clarkson wanted to call the driver The Gimp, after the character in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. But after hiring original team member Perry McCarthy, he refused to be called The Gimp, and so they agreed on The Stig.

The full article, The Story Of Top Gear Telly, Part One, appears in Top Gear magazine, on sale now.

DISCOVER MORE CONTENT LIKE THIS