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COVER-RAGE #1 – Top Gear

• 27th Jan 2011

Like strawberry Ribena and Julia Roberts, Top Gear is something liked and often adored that eludes me as a sinister distraction to the simplicity of human life. Apparently, it’s “fun” and “witty” and “clever” and “interesting” but every time I put it on it just looks like three scarecrows pissing around in a metal playpen, taking part in the testosterone Olympics sometimes switching to an image of a storm trooper in a fancy car. I must be missing something. So, 15 series in, I've decided to sit down and watch an episode, trying everything I could to enjoy it.

My first attempt to make it more enjoyable involved pop music. I synced the entire episode with Prince's classic album 'Purple Rain' in the hope that by ridding my ears of the sound of chauvinist car babble that it would become interesting and watchable. Instead, I almost tripped out in the library as Richard Hammond exactly lip-synced the words to I Would Die 4 U with Clarkson performing a hand moving dance-routine. Needless to say, I still wasn’t swayed.

Secondly, I involved fruit. So, biting through apples, dropping grapes into my mouth and even peeling a banana in the hope that in some sort of Pavlov-dog miracle, I would attribute the joy of fruity health to the programme, I watched. In what might have been a vitamin overdose, I just began to feel queasy and in a spooky apparition, the core of the apple began to resemble the nose of Clarkson, the peel of the Banana, a yellow, bruised version of James May's hair. Top Gear isn't fun; it's the next Meow-Meow. And in that sense, it probably is top gear.

But if I wasn’t enjoying it much, it was nothing on some of the audience members. Some quite clearly massive fans of Clarkson and his cricket-teacher wit, some lucky, or not so lucky competition winners and some clearly dragged along by their partners; kicking and screaming.

“Darling, we’ve been together for 3 years now, and as a little treat, I’ve got us some tickets”
“To the West End?”
“No.”
“To Paris?”
“No.”
“To a spa?!”
“NO! I’ve got us tickets to see Top Gear. Actually SEE Top Gear”
“Yeah, we need to talk…”

Hallucinogenic, predictable and a romance killer. Less national treasure, more national terrorist.

Having said that, I might try watching it again… when I’m 40, subscribed to the Daily Mail, obsessed with petrol and addicted to Quavers but until then I’ve tried the gear and I didn’t like it, I won’t be back anytime soon.