Ferrari Mailing List: Re: The Times on TopGear - "Back on track after just a weebit of an accident"

[Matt Boyd (ferrari308driver]

What channels is it shown on the states these days?  I've got it set on my
ReplayTV (the other DVR) to record at any time, and I've never seen it in
many months....

-matt
'85 308


On 1/31/07, Steve Jenkins <steve [at] stevejenkins.com> wrote:
> I frickin' LOVE that show. Can't wait to see this episode!
>
> I also dig the knock-off Fifth Gear, because Tiff is cool.
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis Liu [mailto:bigheaddennis [at] gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 10:27 AM
> To: Steve Jenkins
> Cc: The FerrariList
> Subject: [Ferrari] The Times on TopGear - "Back on track after just a
> weebit
> of an accident"
>
>
>
> http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22750-2567280,00.html
>
> The Sunday Times January 28, 2007
>
> Back on track after just a wee bit of an accident
>
> As Top Gear swaggers back tonight, Nicholas Rufford looks at the show that
> put a rocket up genteel TV driving programmes
>
>
>
> Tonight Top Gear returns to television screens featuring an all-new array
> of
> stunts, supercars and celebrities. It's a formula that has attracted
> controversy and helped the show achieve almost cult status in 20 different
> countries; but it wasn't always like that. Launched as a weekly round-up
> of
> motoring news, Top Gear had an inauspicious start in 1977. Then it was a
> rather prim and proper half-hour teatime programme — the television
> equivalent of a knitted twinset.
>
> In classic Auntie style, it featured items on road safety, toured
> factories
> to see how cars were made and politely glossed over the fact that in those
> days Lancias were rust buckets and if you crashed a Mini the engine ended
> up
> in your lap.
>
> A perfectly groomed Angela Rippon, the former BBC news anchorwoman,
> introduced inoffensive items on car care and caravanning holidays. Other
> early presenters included Noel Edmonds and William Woollard from
> Tomorrow's
> World.
>
> Jeremy Clarkson did not become lead presenter until three years after his
> first appearance in 1988 when, as a curly-haired 28-year-old motoring
> journalist, he fronted a piece about customised Rolls-Royces. It took a
> while before he found his style (pregnant pauses, upward inflection for
> dramatic effect, and a cutting humour that shocked a cosy motoring
> industry
> out of its complacency), but when he did, Top Gear was transformed,
> pulling
> in huge audiences with its mix of laddish banter and unabashed love
>
> of fast cars. In the early days Clarkson was joined by Quentin Willson, a
> used car dealer, racing driver Tiff Needell and kittenish Vicki Butler-
> Henderson, later supplanted by Kate Humble. But Clarkson was always the
> main
> attraction.
>
>
> When he left Top Gear in 1999, searching for fresh challenges, audience
> figures fell from 6m to less than 3m and the show was axed in 2001. The
> following year Clarkson, with Andy Wilman, a TV producer and his former
> schoolmate at Repton in Derbyshire, hit upon the idea of relaunching Top
> Gear in a new format. "Around about that time the BBC was struggling to
> know
> how to use Jeremy," Wilman recalls. "He was being offered awful stuff like
> Britain's Biggest Cushions or the Top 10 Nicest Curry Spices — I forget
> what
> exactly. When Top Gear went off the air we saw an opportunity."
>
> Out went sensible reviews of dull runarounds, in came the Stig, the Cool
> Wall, Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, stunts, capers and supercars.
> Richard
> Hammond joined the show for the first of the relaunched series, along with
> Jason Dawe, a former car salesman and now The Sunday Times's used car
> expert. When James May rejoined the team (he had presented briefly
> following
> Clarkson's departure) they hit on the perfect chemistry — in Wilman's
> words
> "three old dance troupe queens" in a sort of motorised Last of the Summer
> Wine.
>
> Top Gear, which attracts audiences of 4m-5m, was the world's most pirated
> show last year, largely as a result of being posted by fans on YouTube,
> and
> has inspired a string of lookalikes, including Five's revamped Fifth Gear
> and Sky's Vroom Vroom.
>
> Hammond: watching the crash doesn't hurt at all
>
> The most gripping — if terrifying — sequence to be shown in the new Top
> Gear
> series will be the one that kicks the show off: footage of the near-300mph
> crash that almost killed Richard Hammond.
>
> The programme has taken the decision to broadcast in full the final run
> that
> ended in disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the crash it would have
> been inconceivable for the BBC to show the tape, and it is testament to
> Hammond's remarkable recovery that it feels able to do so now — just four
> months on.
>
> Hammond has no qualms about showing the crash that almost cost him his
> life.
> "If it didn't kill me at the time, it wouldn't kill me just watching it.
> But
> to see the car, track, and details like the crash helmet that saved my
> life
> and the harness that stopped me being smashed to pieces took my breath
> away," he said.
>
> The presenter's memories of the incident are sketchy at best: he remembers
> setting off on the run, then waking up in hospital. However, his reactions
> inside the cockpit have been likened to those of a jet pilot. As the tyre
> broke apart, causing the car to veer to the right, Hammond immediately
> applied opposite lock on the steering wheel, holding the car for vital
> milliseconds before the car left the runway.
>
> The analogy is not far off, according to Wing Commander Rob Adlam, an RAF
> Harrier pilot: "When I saw the pictures I thought, 'That's gone, that tyre
> has exploded, he's going the wrong way and there is nothing he can do
> about
> it.' There is only so much you can do in the finite amount of time between
> something going wrong and an accident happening."
>
> Some have claimed Hammond didn't take the right evasive action, but it is
> questionable whether anyone could have avoided this crash.
>
> "Richard was strapped to a firework," said Perry McCarthy, the former
> Formula One racing driver who played the original Stig in Top Gear. "I
> don't
> know what happened but I can tell you that even with the amount of racing
> experience that I or any other racing driver has, if something went wrong
> with the car we would not be able to do anything about it either."
>
> According to McCarthy, the moments leading up to a crash are the most
> frightening. "It's not all over in seconds — it's faster than that. Your
> brain is recognising that you are coming up to a wall or whatever at
> 200mph,
> so you know you haven't terribly long and you are trying to make a plan;
> there is a microprocess going on in your brain as you try to fight it
> using
> all the skills that you have, but at the same time there is 1% of you
> thinking, 'This is going to hurt, this could be goodnight'."
>
> Jeremy Clarkson
>
> Nickname Jezza
> Top Gear history Presenter from 1989-1999 then from 2002
> Before Top Gear Travelling salesman selling Paddington Bear toys for his
> parents' company, journalist on the Rotherham Advertiser
> Lives Oxfordshire with wife Francie and their three children
> Favourite cars Bugatti Veyron, Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, Rolls-Royce
> Phantom
> Look Jacket, deck shoes and Levi's 501 jeans. Drapers, magazine to the
> fashion industry, blamed "the Jeremy effect" for poor denim sales in the
> late 1990s
> Driving style Opinionated. Clarkson's daughter Emily complained in a
> Sunday
> Times article of Coke cans in the footwells and constant gripes about
> roadworks, "the colour of somebody else's Ferrari" and buses
> Best lines (On the Smart Roadster) "In fact, it has exactly the same top
> speed as Henry VIII"; (On the Koenigsegg CCX) "It sounds like the Norse
> god
> of thunder gargling a hammer"; (About the Porsche 911) "Well, this isn't
> so
> much a car, more a place where a fat, balding, middle-aged man can go off
> and have his mid-life crisis ... I liked it a lot"; "Speed has never
> killed
> anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you, that's the
> killer"
> Did you know? Is the great-great-great grandson of John Kilner
> (1792-1857),
> who invented the Kilner jar. Is learning to play the drums. Was one of the
> passengers on Concorde's last flight when he paraphrased Neil Armstrong to
> describe the demise of the supersonic plane: "This is one small step for a
> man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind." Also appeared as the voice
> of
> Harv, Lightning McQueen's agent, in the Disney Pixar animation Cars.
> Passed
> his driving test in his grandfather's Bentley
>
> James May
>
> Nickname Captain Slow and the Other Bloke from Top Gear
> Top Gear history Presented in 1999 then rejoined in 2003
> Before Top Gear Subeditor on The Engineer then on Autocar, presented
> Driven
> on Channel 4 in 1998
> Lives West London, with his cat Fusker
> Favourite cars Bentley T2, Rolls-Royce Corniche, Fiat Panda Dishevelled
> geography teacher/tousle-haired squire
> Look Driving style Slow – although others have dubbed it "stately". Claims
> to practise "Christian motoring"
> Best lines (On the Honda Element) "Would the Element be a car for people
> who
> like hip-hop, or for people waiting for a hip op?"; "And now, the car
> every
> footballer's wife's hairdresser's masseuse has been waiting for: the new
> Mercedes SLK"; "I still think I'm better at writing than TV presenting.
> I'm
> only all right on the TV because I'm a bit hopeless, but people seem to
> quite like that"
> Did you know? He is licensed to fly a light aircraft. Plays the piano and
> studied music at Lancaster University. Was sacked from Autocar after he
> spelt out a hidden message (about how tedious a production task was) in a
> magazine supplement he was subediting and readers phoned in thinking they
> had won a prize
>
> Richard Hammond
>
> Nickname The Hamster
> Top Gear history Joined in 2002
> Before Top Gear Barman and "chicken chaser" at a chicken farm. Began
> broadcasting career at BBC Radio York
> Lives Gloucestershire with his wife Mindy and their two young  daughters
> Favourite cars Porsche 911, original Dodge Charger
> Look Spiky-haired, sparkly-toothed housewives' favourite
> Driving style Nippy/jet-propelled
> Best lines (During the Lillehammer bobsleigh run) "Apparently it hits  Gs
> in
> some of those corners down there. The driver's told me that he's been
> doing
> this for six years and he's 3cm shorter. I can't afford to lose 3cm!";
> "Unless I have been sorely misinformed, supermodels are powerless to 6½
> resist a man with illuminated doorsills"; "I have not had my teeth
> whitened"
> (repeatedly, in response to Clarkson's jibes)
> Did you know? Has three horses, four dogs, two cats, a rabbit and handful
> of
> chickens. Presents Cruft's on the BBC. Is 5ft 7in tall. When he had to
> work
> on Mindy's birthday in 2005 he arranged for her dream bike, a
> Harley-Davidson Sportster, to be delivered to their house. Following his
> jet
> car accident he developed a brief passion for Lego
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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