Top Gear Will Be Back, No Need To Kill Self

When I saw on my RSS feed that Michael posted something about Top Gear never coming back, I was ready to commit seppuku. I’m not even kidding. I dread the six to eight months a year when Top Gear isn’t on the air and when it is, I constantly check FinalGear.com to get the latest episodes on Sunday nights, hopefully minutes after they’ve encoded them to DIVX.

I don’t think I could go on without hearing Jeremy Clarkson making fun of Richard Hammond’s teeth whitening or James May talking about how the only thing he keeps in his car is a small paintbrush to clean the dials and how when people move his vents, he gets very angry. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but I would mourn, petition, fly to England and punch Clarkson…anything to get my favorite automotive program back on the air. So when Michael posted that it was gone forever, I was ready to buy my plane tickets.

Now it seems as though Michael was wrong. Very wrong. In fact, for the pain and suffering he’s caused me in the past few hours, I’m going to punch him in the face kick him in the chest the next time I see him.

Even in the news site that he linked, there was speculation that the reports that Top Gear was dead were completely unfounded and that Clarkson’s comment regarding how the show won’t be back were misconstrued. I dug further in the FinalGear forums, which I felt were more credible since there were several Top Gear insiders who answer questions and give us reports.

Many speculated that Clarkson’s comments were in reference to contract talks, since Jeremy and James May were up for renewal. However, while I wouldn’t put it past Jeremy to milk the very left-wing, green, environmentalist stance BBC for more money, it seemed rather unlikely since without Top Gear, Clarkson wouldn’t be much of a celebrity. Others said that Clarkson was threatening the producers, who wanted more celebrities and less cars on the show. This also seemed absurd since it was, first and foremost, a car show and Top Gear was coming off their best season yet, with more than 8 million people viewing the final episode (not to mention the millions around the world who watch it on BBC World or download the UK feed).

My fears subsided once I came across a short BBC report:

Top Gear’s James May has told Newsbeat the show’s definitely returning later this year, with all three presenters. There was confusion earlier this week after Jeremy Clarkson hinted it may not be back. But May says it was a mix-up over timing.

I read further into this and found out that the airfield where Top Gear is filmed was apparently kicking them out since the lease was up and they wanted to demolish the whole place to build a residential area. This means that they have to find a new place to film the show and this would take time, which makes Clarkson’s comments of how the show would not be back in the summer make more sense.

So Top Gear will be back, just not as soon as the announcer thought it would be when he mistakenly said “summer” a couple weeks ago during the end credits. The moral of the story is: check your story before you press that publish button…or a large Asian man, as Michael will find out on Saturday, might punch you in the face kick you in the chest.

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