Word: wilman
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...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...
...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...
...Reproducing the English show's success through local versions won't be easy. Unlike more widely franchised programs - The Weakest Link, say, or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - there's no easy-to-follow formula guaranteed to work. "Our production bible?" asks Wilman, "It's three men, a thick racing driver who can't speak, they're in a room, and that's it. There's nothing." But some aspects of the British show should travel well. "The Stig," for instance, figures in the Australian and U.S. versions, while inviting local celebrities to race the clock around a circuit...
...wrote in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper in March. Garvie swats away the suggestion. "We haven't found that NBC or advertisers have put any pressure on us," he says. Top Gear's magazines, Garvie adds, "have the same attitude, and the manufacturers still advertise in their hordes." Says Wilman: "It's the only way it can work, that you have pockets of like-minded souls, doing Top Gear-y things." That means making fun, as much as making money...