Clarkson in Viet Nam
 

Anyone see this over Christmas? Personally I think he's a pratt, but Top Gear is always amusing and well presented. This time the 3 of them were riding a selection of bikes over nearly a 1000 miles from south to north Viet Nam. Quite entertaining and a first to see Clarkson on 2 wheels.

Seconded, thirded and fourthed...

Yes he is very self-opinionated and anti-bike, but he is also a master of knowing what the average viewer wants for entertainment and this allied to a fine sense of humour results in a world-class show ?c?

He is a twat, pratt, cock, etc, etc and his ant-bike retoric gets on my tits but, I do still find him entertaining. His books are an easy read and even a good laff(sic)

He can be funny, but his sense of humour is only any good if he has time to write and rehearse.

I once saw him as a guest on the quiz show Q.I., hosted by Stephen Fry, with Alan Davies, etc. The level of wit on there is impressive and he was miserably in over his head. His off the cuff humour boiled down to making a stuffed toy shag another stuffed toy....several times...in different positions...bit sad really...

...As do most funnymen/comics etc. Ok, his premeditated humour is fine and that comes out in the script for the show, but his arrogance can be breathtaking. Still great tv, though :funmeteryes:

yeah i thought it was great christmas viewing. he may be a bit miss-guided in his vocal utterances but i have to say learning to ride a vespa in saigon traffic takes some real stones.

Jolly Good Show Clarkson!
 

:scooter: Couldn't believe they let him ride off into the Saigon traffic without checking the scooter over or teaching him how to ride first!

Can't blame Hammond and collander helmeted May for taking off and leaving the arrogant anti biker to his own fate, as they must have thought it just desserts! which leads me to think that there must be someone high up in the Beeb who is out to assinate Clarkson!

Was worth the wait though to see his face as he swept through the bends and finally admitted that he understood what biking was all about. Just imagine the size of his grin though had he had been on an Aprilia Tuono, instead of a poor handling poxy underpowered scooter!

Great ending as well, especially his get off!!!, when they transformed their rides into motorboats and headed for the pub.

Also a great advert for Cambodia and Vietnam, which have now been added to my list of future trips.

Well done Top Gear!

Ride safe


Chris

Clarkson on a Vespa
 

Clarkson is a big oaf but I love watching him, Hammond and May. Top Gear is one of the top shows in the UK and catching on in Canada and the US. They are making a US Top Gear but I don't think it will compare. I love the British wit and humor that is distinctly British. The show is so popular that you cant get tickets for 19 years. I got a great laugh over the Vietnam show especially how Clarkson would eat anything and Hammond won't eat anything but fish and chips or bangers 'n mash.

clarkson & may are great, but i sodding hate the hamster. i just find him dumb & irritating to the nth degree.

Philosophical question: Is Clarkson an arrogant oaf, or just very good at playing an arrogant oaf? I'd go for the former, but then I remember the programmes he did on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the St Nazaire Raid and the Arnem Bridge. I have a feeling he's just a very clever marketeer.

Annoyingly of course it's meant that Vietnam has moved back up the list of places for me to ride before I die. Thank God I already own a 125.

Im doing the northwest loop in vietnam this summer, thanks to the sunday night show. i agree, he is a very clever chap and his report about riding motorcycles in the times (Jeremy Clarkson Vespa GTV Navy 125 review | Driving - Times Online) is, in all honesty, hilarious! he also rode a ducati round the monaco gp circuit, all be it gingerly.

imho, bbc stop wasting time with mr ewan "wow isnt this great" mcgregor and mr charley "wow isnt this wonderful" boorman, and give us some more histerical roadtrips featuring a bunch of bummbling brits!

Over here they've been showing Top Gear with subtitles, so I can actually watch a British programme when I tired of not having a clue what is being said...

However, there is no great chronological order to the episodes being shown. When you compare the presenting Clarkson made back in 2002, back to back with episodes from 2006 or 2007 you can definitely see a startling difference.

The guy's ego has grown into something horrifying: the way he goes about in latter episodes just makes you want to lamp him. Thank goodness May still puts him in his place once in a while. The "tests" (I use the term loosely) are fixed either to make look Clarkson look great, cars look great, or the Mayor of London incompetent. If you're going to do a test: even if it does not tell us something particularly useful, at least do it fairly. The TV licence is exhorbitant as it is without it being used as a self-importance implant.

If I want predicatble fixed TV, I can watch WWF wrestling....

Then there was the "Lets drive a Toyota, that accidfentally dumps one tank of fuel along the way, all the way to the North Pole" episode. It just made me sad to see a bunch of tyre tracks across the Northern Ice caps.
Nope.... I'm open to changing my views, but he'd have to back-pedal pretty hard for that to happen.

Posed by Warthog
-I agree, but when you consider that the rejuvinated Top Gear has become a huge worldwide hit for the Beeb and Mr C owns the international syndication rights (allegedly...). So wouldn't you be a bit smug? But this does not give him Carte Blanche to wreak environmental chaos at will - that really annoys me!

Posted by Alexlebrit
-I'm glad that someone has remembered just how supportive Mr C is of our beleaguered national psyche i.e. our Britishness, and our Armed Forces. For this i applaud him.

Just a thought:
Why is it beleaguered? Is it not down to the population to bolster the "National Psyche", rather than one bloke?

Britain seems to have lost the ability to be proud of being British, simply for the sake of it.

I have seen one or two documentaries by JC and, to be fair, if he is simply narrating & explaining and not playing up to the camera he's a very good presenter. That said, you know the sorts of remarks I mean when Clarkson makes (equally visible in the Tabloid press) a comment relating to a British acheivement it often goes hand in hand with something that pokes fun at the French, Americans, Germans, Italians etc, and gets a laugh from the audience: mental Cross of St Geroge waving (?), Island Mentailty (?)
Why is that? So when he is playing up to the camera, Clarkson seems way too vocal in this respect.

However, the times I've been in France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc, I don't remember seeing this sort of attitude.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe its just me, but I get the feeling that if the French are proud to be French or ditto the Germans or indeed any nation local to the UK, they don't seem to need to do it off the back of another nationality, they do it for the sake of their own. They don't seem to feel the need to justify it. I think its something Britain has forgotten how to do....

Either way, being half French, half Brit, having half my heritage sometimes being the object of ridicule for no apparent reason other than to make the other half feel good about themselves, I've often wondered what is impulse behind it all.

Amazing how far from Top Gear a topic can travel on this forum, eh? I suppose it is a travelling website, after all....