Word: clarksons
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...uninitiated, the BBC show Top Gear might seem an improbable hit. Consider the premise: the weekly, hour-long program features "three middle-aged men fooling around using cars as props," says Jeremy Clarkson, one of its presenters. "That doesn't sound very exciting, does it?" Perhaps these guys are easy on the eye? "They're a bit fat, and they dress like s___," says Andy Wilman, Top Gear's executive producer. "You don't look at them and think, it's Ocean's Eleven coming toward...
...show whose luck stalled just a few years back. In 2001, 24 years after it was launched, Top Gear ran out of gas. Its restart the following year owes much to Wilman and Clarkson, who quit the show in 1999 after just over a decade fronting it. Over beers in a London pub, the two sketched the show's current format: out went the string of turgid, outside-broadcast pieces to camera. In came a cavernous studio. Fresh faces were added. A mystery racing driver, permanently hidden beneath overalls and a crash helmet and known only as "the Stig," injected...
...doesn't hurt that the presenters sometimes crash headlong into trouble. Behind the wheel of their Toyota pickup in the race with a dog-pulled sled to the North Pole last year, Clarkson and fellow presenter James May sipped gin and tonics, earning a rap on the knuckles from BBC trustees. Earlier this month, in a segment designed to find out how hard life is for truckers, Clarkson, at the wheel of a truck, said: "Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day." More than...
...Clarkson is key to Top Gear 's on-air attitude, but he and Wilman are also crucial when it comes to squeezing cash out of the brand. The men work closely with Global Brands, the BBC Worldwide unit set up last year to exploit some of the broadcaster's most marketable shows. Merchandising spin-offs - from Top Gear-branded cakes to video games - need the pair's approval long before the goodies hit store shelves. And rather than pay Clarkson and Wilman out of the cash that comes from TV licenses, BBC Worldwide last year took a stake in Bedder...
...Read about Jeremy Clarkson's all-time favorite cars...