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Jeremy Clarkson © Twitter TheArchiniChris Boardman to assess Jeremy Clarkson's cycling safety public information film on Sunday's Top Gear
The mystery of exactly what Jeremy Clarkson and James May were doing tooling around the West End on bikes recently looks set to be revealed on Sunday when Chris Boardman will be on a panel that assesses the “public information film” the pair were filming.
The Top Gear presenters were spotted on bikes earlier this month, Jeremy Clarkson on an upright hybrid bike that appeared to be rather too small for him, and James May aboard a Brompton. The pair appeared to be filming their faces with GoPro cameras attached to the handlebars.
According to the Radio Times, they were making a ‘public information film’ to promote safer cycling. The feature will be shown in the fifth episode of the current series, which goes to air at 8pm this Sunday on BBC Two (10pm in Wales).
The film will be presented to a panel of experts including British Cycling policy advisor Chris Boardman and members of Westminster Council, one of the London boroughs most notoriously negative about cycling provision.
Chris Boardman couldn’t tell us much about the segment as he hasn’t seen the final edit.
“Anything to do with Top Gear is playing with fire, which is why people watch it,” he said. “On the flip side, it’s also a chance to reach a wider (motoring) audience and portray ourselves as ‘one of you’ rather than cycling fanatics. Just normal people with a sense of humour, who’d like to see more cycling.
“I’m not in control of the edit but knowing a bit about making telly, I could see how they could cut it to look several different ways!
“We’ll see on Sunday if the gamble has paid off.”
The theme of the segment explains why Mr Clarkson and Mr May had gone to some lengths to equip themselves with safety gear, including matching helmets, hi-viz jackets and gloves, and sunglasses despite the gloomy day.
It seemed Mr Clarkson’s jacket was so new he hadn’t removed the tags, leading to speculation he was planning to return them after filming.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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54 comments
Try telling that to Crapita, who constantly harass any household that does not buy a TV Licence. They just cannot believe you can live without a TV.
Stopped watching Top Gear long ago, it's the same script every week, slightly different cars, slightly different countries that they are sent to at TV Licence payers expense, to take the piss out of "foreigners" and drive cars nobody can afford.
Is it me? I just want to punch Clarkson in that wrinkled face.
I expect that if they try and twist or make stuppid arguments that CB will be more than up to the task of putting them straight, taking them down a few pegs and putting the message across in a sensible, coherent and well thought through way. Hopefully he won't need to, but i'm sure he can do.
I'm expecting some humorous attempts at satire with what the production team deem an important message tucked away in the middle of it. Like they always do. Whatever is coming they've been building up to for a while, with Clarkson claiming to own a bike now for some time. There's no way a man with a reputation for preparation and planning like Boardman would go into this with his eyes closed either.
Comment about how shit it is after its shown not before, glad you lot are not on a jury, judged and sentenced before the the evidence has been shown, you just make cyclist look like a bunch of whiners.
As far as I am aware, a jury would not paid a handsome wage via a tax on virtually everyone in the country and then given the opportunity to increase those earnings by selling their verdict to various other idiots abroad. I'm also fairly certain that a jury is to provide a verdict on the evidence they have been shown, not to provide fat, oafish, walking mid-life crises a soapbox from which to spew forth their cretinous views time and time again, marginally hiding behind the pretense that it is supposed to be humour but mainly protected by the fact that they make a lot of money for those that are supposed to be keeping them in check.
I could be wrong though.
Which was the point the guy before was making! All your post does is reek of jealousy more than anything that you're not oafish or boorish enough to earn lots of money making TV programmes.
I often feel such envy! Deluded self-belief and a complete lack of desire to think critically about what you are saying seems to be a recipe for success in today's media. Don't worry about constructing careful rational arguments based on evidence and reason, that's boring and won't get you noticed, instead just suppress all moral qualms and be bullying and provocative (but always with an elegant prose style). Professional trolling is the way to go!
Wish I had what it takes!
To be fair, it also needs a very thick skin, given the animosity such a career can generate in sections of the public. I don't think I could take the heat.
Yeah, because nobody can ever make a judgement about something based on prior knowledge and experience. Ever. Don't have a view on a possible BNP government till you've tried it, don't assume anything about how a particular paper (whether its the Mail or the Guardian) will cover a particular story, and don't believe decades of evidence tells us anything about Jeremy Clarkson's attitudes, or about the nature of TV-audience-chasing, because everything is a blank-slate, everything should be approached with the innocence of a new-born child!
And a jury? Are you saying this programme may be a crime? Will we have some sort of legal authority over its makers that gives us a strict burden of neutrality? I wish!
My prediction is this will be somewhat annoying, with plenty of the usual "I pay road tax" sort of guff, but not as bad as expected, because JC is a smart guy and probably at some level understands the issues a lot better than do most of the audience he happily panders to.
("Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" - as Homer Simpson put it)
Yeah good. I hope it all comes up because then Boardman can nail it. You need Clarkson to bring it all out for Chris to address. There is no point having a soft ride and then people saying that Clarkson never asked him about Road Tax and was soft on Boardman cos it would be too hard for him to answer.
Drag it all out. Let's be having it. So the whole audience sees it all dealt with on prime time telly. That's what the opportunity provides.
...
It's been shown.
It was shit.
It'll be a lark. Japes. The usual mindless nonsense.
And in a few months time when Boardman tries to make a serious valid point the mass media will swing and refer back to whatever it was the editors of Top Gear made it sound like he said.
It's a hatchet job masquerading as light entertainment.
Despite the commonly quoted statistics for how many cyclists have a full license and drive, there are still people that for some reason think being pro-cycling must naturally be anti-motoring.
My own experience is that I've found more petrolheads amongst riders than average. In particular, I can think of a few cycling co-workers from past jobs who had expensive performance cars tucked away for weekends and evening. That just weren't daft enough to try to commute into London in it during the day, and the money saved on fares probably helped buy it.
I bet someone at Top Gear has worked out how many of their audience cycle. I'm sure they're going to rip on the subject in a pretty daft way, but thats just the humour of the show. Boardman's clearly walking into this with his eyes wide open. Join in and have a chuckle at the cliches.
How are matching helmets 'safety gear'?
Being a massive PetrolHead and cyclist gives a certain conflict in interest but I think this does have positive impact on cycling. TG has a big folllowing, and yes im aware some are narrow minded but the other year they did the race across LDN and the bike was well used. JC is in the public eye so ofcourse hes going to gob off from time to time, he lays the bait and different people bite.
My point being, until people with more power make the changes necessary to provide for the bike above the car we are always going to have these litte snipes at eachother.
Oh let's hope Clarkson suffered a punishment pass despite dressing as a luminous lemon and goes to remonstrate with a driver who idolises him... might explain the taped mouth. But I fear it won't be that good.
Clarkson and cycling generally means one thing looking at past reports.
Bad news!!!!
Lets hope not?
"The theme of the segment explains why Mr Clarkson and Mr May had gone to some lengths to equip themselves with safety gear, including matching helmets, hi-viz jackets and gloves, and sunglasses despite the gloomy day."
You mean that safety on the road is going to be thought of in the same non-evidence based, victim-blaming, just-buy-something-to-be-safe, usual old drivel.
Of course it is worthwhile getting through to a motoring audience, but this does not bode well for doing it properly. Chris Boardman is normally bang on when it comes to cyclist safety (see this for an example http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/04/27/get-britain-cycling-is-chris-boardman-righ...) . He is good at refusing to have anything to do with initiatives that don't really support cycling when they claim to, so let's wait to see him storm away from anything in this case that is not really helpful.
Which is what is likely to happen.
I mean, really...
The tag thing has been a running joke for years
We had to scrap our car earlier this year. There have been a couple of occasions when I've missed it, but in general I've been enjoying the increased disposable income and reduced exposure to morons.
We got rid of our telly and stopped paying the licence fee a few years back. There have been a couple of occasions when I've missed it, but...
You get the idea.
Good on you. They're both things that feel a bit dated now.
Did the same about 15 years ago, and you're so right, it just keeps getting better.
Replacing top gear by an hour showing the carnage inflicted by cars would be the best public information film. They could even let fst mouthy narrate it.
God help all cyclists
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