| Wednesday, September 15, 2010 |
06:40 - Some say he's a mercenary ass
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/07/jeremy-clarkson-stig-sacked
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Jeremy Clarkson says the Stig has been "sacked".
Clarkson said he felt "a bit hurt really". "It was such a shock. It was horrible actually because I liked him and he came round to my house and had drinks and all that time he was writing a book," he added, in a video interview published online today by Oxfordshire-based community news service WitneyTV.
"He's just decided he'd rather be ... put it this way he's history as far as we are concerned. He's sacked," said Clarkson, who was interviewed at a charity auction at Chipping Norton Lido.
"I've spent the last three weeks doing nothing but trying work out what out what an earth to do instead. You may remember a film called Wall Street in which Gordon Gekko said greed was good and greed works. It doesn't, if you're watching this children, greed is bad," he added.
About time, I say.
This is what had me so confused about all the footsy-games the Top Gear guys had been playing for the past month or two regarding the "outing" of Ben Collins as the Stig: all the vitriol seemed to be aimed at the publisher of his book, HarperCollins, and its alleged corporate greed—not, for some reason, the opportunism of Ben Collins himself.
I mean, it was Collins' decision to go and write the tell-all, wasn't it? It was his call to breach the confidentiality agreement upon which his job was founded. He was the one who went to HarperCollins with the pitch. All they did, as far as I can see, was to take what he was offering in good faith. They're not the ones who betrayed Top Gear; Collins is.
So this is the first time the presenters seem to have actually leveled the blame where it belongs: at Collins himself. Up till now, they've been doing tongue-in-cheek flights of fancy that attempt to deflect and confuse, while the fans and the pundits rail against the evil book publishers who print their exposés without a thought to the cultural damage they might be causing. But up till now the Stig himself has been oddly immune to the criticism, even though to my way of thinking he's the one who should be weathering it all himself.
It's such a conniving thing to do, is the main complaint I have: it's not like he just naïvely thought he might be able to write a book and make some cash on the side from his cushy BBC job. He knew—or he had to know—that unmasking himself would be a breach of a legal agreement and the start of a period of serious turmoil for the show that's the very subject of the book. He knew that writing the book would mean the end of any professional or personal relationship with the show's cast and producers. In other words, he'd have known he was throwing away his primary source of TV income in favor of whatever short-term gains his book might earn him, and with that the end of his professional career in showbiz (since who would trust him with an agreement now?). There's never been a more apt illustration of killing that golden-egg-laying goose.
I'm glad the gloves are finally off, frankly.
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Brian Tiemann
