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....

-I don't think it's that we've lost the ability as such, more that it's so frowned upon (in comparison to many of our neighbours) in these pc times that overt pride is seen as shouting nationalism - and that's a no-no!:oops2:. Anyway, apologies for diverting from the main element of the thread:offtopic:.

I think this PC thing is definitely part of it. As for changing the subject: No need! I'm as guilty as the next one on that count!!

warthog i agree...
 

:offtopic: sort of again but that whole stunt where they all flew spitfires into germany to challenge their german counter parts was pointless and stupid, and down right in-sensitive to glorify a weapon of war as a reason "we" are the best. I was deeply concerned when I read the synopsis for the Vietnam show, and thought it would be a load of Apocalypse Now/Platoon gags. I was glad to see it was a bit more tasteful, to the point where even the Hamster's military style helmet looked down right cool!

I guess "knocking" our neighbours in Europe and accross the rest of the world is part of what gives Britain pride. We used to be an empire dont ya know....yeah, who gives a f***!

I'm a Brit, I live in France (where incidentally Top Gear is hugely popular and even gets talked about in the motoring press), and I've had my fair share of mickey taken out of me, so I don't think it's in any way a British trait, to poke fun at the neighbours.

The British bit comes in feeling guilty for doing so afterwards.

yeah i guess your right. it winds me up sometimes as i do live in one of those nothern villages where there is little tollerence for different cultures.

back on topic though, how likely is the possibility of more bike trips/tests on our favourite motoring television show?

My point was not so much that mickey-taking takes place: I have no issue with that per se as its usually said in good humour and received likewise. Its when things are said to ridicule. Making the other look bad, in order to make one look good by default...

Taking isolated incidences is not very useful, its just an impression I'm left with... but an isolated example would be the Spitfire scene. That was not really appropriate IMO, not said in good humour etc.... it was designed to make the TG bunch look cool and ridicule the others IMO. I just think that is a bit of a crappy attitude....

Now ignore me and go back on topic: stop being so easily distracted!!

That article is funny in places but shows what a numbnut Clarkson really is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of misguided people who actually think he knows what he's talking about. His lack of knowledge is most obvious when discussing cars with guests on Top Gear who know more about the subject than he does! I do watch Top Gear but I stopped taking him seriously after his comment about putting cheesewire across a road to decapitate bikers riding near his home. Joking or not, does he not realise that people have actually tried this?

BTW, I'd love to see Clarkson riding a Ducati (slow steering, massive turning circle) around Monaco (very tight street circuit)! Did he drop it? :Beach:

Bumbling Brits
 

, and give us some more histerical roadtrips featuring a bunch of bummbling brits![/quote]

I'm almost a Brit and can bummble and often trip on roads. Anyone know how to get the BBC to pay me? Linzi.


See I'm so bummbling I can't quote proper like. Linzi

nah he didnt drop it but it was rather slow, and he admited he looked like a prat. bummbling brit was not a good descriptive phrase. i meant to say i want motorcycle TV shows to be gritty/crazy/'dan walsh'y rather than boring and samey like LWD and BAM.

I've had a look round the 'net for any footage but all I've found is stories that it was a 916, he did actually drop it (but not televised) and someone else may have actually rode the bike for some of the TV footage. Either way, it makes a mockery of him saying he's never been on a bike before.

Top Gear is ok as long as you look at it as entertainment and not as a serious motoring program. 5th Gear as better in content but not as entertaining. I love classic Alfa Romeo's and I just couldn't watch TG when they trashed the 75, classic Spider and modern GTV. The show they did with the Ferrari 308GT4, Maserati Merak and Lamborghini Urraco was near sacrilege too. The Maserati that Clarkson trashed was previously show condition and featured on the front cover of Classic and Sportscar, sometime in the late 80's/early 90's, incidentally it was in a back to back test against the Ferrari 308GT4. I still have that mag somewhere in the loft.

I agree with you about TV motorcycle shows being boring and samey. Even that Henry Cole guy who did "Riding Eastern Europe" did a crap effort. All he seemed to do is ride on motorways and bitch about the crew.

What I'd love to see a TV show about Nick Sanders RTW on the Yamaha R1. Saw Nick and his R1 at the NEC bike show last month. What a mess it was. The girl at the NEC handing out his flyers was obviously hired for her massive.. er.. personality :thumbup1:

Year's back when I were but a wee lad, Cheryl Baker was still thin and Roy Castle still alive, Nick Sanders's first RTW was featured on Record Breakers, with a regular 5-10 minute slot each programme. Being far too young (and poor) I couldn't have a motorbike at the time, but I remember thinking, "One day, I want to do that".

I'd completely forgotten my first introduction to long distance biking till you posted that, thanks for bring it all back.

Like me, you'll also be the right age to remember watching this...

YouTube - junior kickstart

Compare that to the Teutul family building a "theme bike" for McDonald's or another random company, desperate to get their name on TV. No contest.

being even younger it was the biker mice from mars that got me into motorbikes, as well as that motorcycle chase from mission impossibe 2, oh and the who, that why i got a vespa first :mchappy:

Has Clarkson had a facelift?
 

Just watching Dave, (the TV channel, not a mate of mine) and saw what looked like a very young Clarkson, once again saying he can't ride a bike, comfortably negotiating his way through the 2 wheel MPV's that make up most of the traffic in Saigon. He was doing well and had a big cheesy grin on his face, but this time he was on a Honda Dream Scooter! :scooter:

Funny that?

Chris

Just shows how much of an act his tv persona is, i mean virtually anyone can ride a stepthru! And how badly has Mr C aged in the 8 years since then, absolutely shocking... But at least he's growing old disgracefully :thumbup1::funmeteryes:

8 Years ago! Can't believe it!
 

Hi Pottsy

Only 8 Years ago! I can't believe it! He looked about 25 in that program.

Still, makes me feel better about myself, even though I keep thinking my old man's looking back at me every time I look in the mirror!

In the latest Top Gear episode, did anyone hear him mention that he had ridden on 2 wheels in Saigon before??? Don't think so and have a look at this clever condensed version of Top Gear on Youtube, where the liar states, "I have never ridden a bike before", just as he said in the previous Clarkson/Saigon program!

YouTube - Top Gear - Remix - Vietnam

It's good, as this chap has captured the misery of Clarkson and the joy of May and Hammond nicely and there's a lovely bit where May tells Clarkson: "Oh, stop whining!"

Chris

*Grow old disgracefully and live dangerously for as long as you can!*

"Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional"
I'll drink to that!

A couple of friends from the minsk club in Hanoi rode the Top Gear camera crew around for the Vietnam special , and did all bike maintenence , the top gear presenters caught a train for a fair wack of the trip, the Minsk club guys also built the floating bikes , not Clarkson and co!

Na ,I recon they did it all on there own .And made the boats to.They wouldnt have been bothered to have there custom helmets made before they started if they didnt. there hardcore bikers man .

what we have to realise is......
 

The only reason Clarkson slags off bikes is because he's scared of them. I remember seeing somewhere that he couldn't believe the response when you open the throttle. I personally like Clarkson. He comes out with things that others in the public eye are scared to openly say, for the fear of appearing un pc or offensive. It's a breath of fresh air to have someone in the public eye who actually says it how it is and doesn't worry about the fallout.
Keep it up Jezza. Just remember, bikers are better car drivers!!!!