Richard Porter,Top Gear script editor:'Every so often I had

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson, James May And The Naan Bread Incident
A story about filming a segment at mima in Middlesbrough for Series 14 Episode 5 in November 2009

 Tales from Top Gear by Richard Porter   Thursday, May 14th, 2015

Sniff Petrol is a humorist, former Top Gear script editor

Jeremy Clarkson, James May And The Naan Bread Incident

Tales from Top Gear by Richard Porter   Thursday, May 14th, 2015
 Sniff Petrol 5/14/15 4:00pm

The Naan Bread
 
The other day on Twitter I mentioned that I had some stories from my 13 years as script editor on Top Gear, but that they weren’t very interesting. Since a couple of people asked, I’ve written this so you can see what I mean.

There was an unwritten rule on Top Gear that the further away from cars we got, the worse an item was going to be. As a general guide, if you didn’t see a car moving on screen for over two minutes, the film was probably sh*te. Unfortunately, every so often we completely forgot about this rule. Which is how come we ended up making an idiotic thing in which we took over an art gallery and filled it with motoring themed things. If memory serves, it came about because of some bet Jeremy had made with a mate who ran a real art gallery, but casual bets aren’t necessarily a good basis for actual television programmes. Otherwise we could have filled 40 minutes watching Hammond trying to fit six Crème Eggs into his mouth.

Before anyone realised this, a very nice gallery in Middlesbrough had agreed to let us take over their building and James May and I were on a train to the North East in cheery mood. I think we spent most of the journey looking at Triumph Dolomites for sale on the internet. We’d had this idea to record a real time audio guide to our exhibition, the kind you listen to on a little rented headset when you visit a proper gallery. Except, ours would be a gag based on the gallery’s many rooms and James’s on screen persona which had a poor sense of direction, inspired by James’s real life persona which also had a poor sense of direction. We thought the headset idea sounded hilarious. Then we realised that for it to work (which is to say, for it to send baffled members of the public blithering about into walls and down fire escapes and into the disabled loo), we’d have to record a full length commentary for real. Hence we were sent up to the location early and James spent the afternoon wandering about the gallery, describing left and right turns in excessive and baffling detail while I sat in the café downstairs and occasionally rang him to ask how he was getting on which would prompt him to tell me to sod off, and this too would be recorded onto the commentary along with, if I remember correctly, a part where he broke off a speech about sculpture to go for an actual wee. Eventually, the idiotic commentary was recorded and we went to the hotel for a drink.

The next morning there was some grand plan which involved Hammond going off to plug our crap art show on local radio, Jeremy driving his rubbish art car to the location and James hanging some more pictures or something. This is where it went a bit wrong. May and I loafed around the hotel with our film crew for ages having an agreeable breakfast and then someone couldn’t find some car keys and someone else had lost their phone there was a general bit of faffing about before finally we headed towards the gallery. We all had a lot to do and everyone else had been busily filming for ages, except us. Jeremy rang me to see how we were getting on and I had to explain that we were still in the back of a crew van, bumbling out of the hotel car park.

The thing about Jeremy is that he likes exaggeration. Also, he’s very good at it. So his reaction was quite hyperbolic. “You’re WHAT?” he boomed. “This is a complete DISASTER.” We’d had quite a few drinks in the hotel bar the night before. I was tired and possibly a bit hung over and not in the mood for overstatement. “It’s not a complete disaster,” I snapped. “If you want a f**king disaster…” At this point the line went dead. In retrospect, this was almost certainly because we were on mobile phones and one of them had dropped the connection. But at the time, I didn’t think of that. I thought Jeremy had hung up on me. And I was very cross about this. How rude, I thought. How bloody sodding rude. And this put me in a foul mood with Jeremy that somehow lasted all day and into the evening, right up to the point when the director said he had quite enough footage with Clarkson and May in it and perhaps I would like to get them out of his way by taking them for a curry. ‘Ooh, a curry,’ said James. I struggle to think of a moment when James May would turn down the offer of a curry. Unless of course he was already consuming a curry, and even then he’d have to think twice before turning down another. So the three of us went into Middlesbrough to get a curry.

The curry house we were recommended didn’t, I would guess, get a lot of stars walking into its premises. As a consequence, Jeremy and James were treated like royalty and immediately ushered to the ‘VIP area’, which was a table at the back, up a couple of steps. Ironic really, since very famous people notoriously don’t ‘do’ stairs. Unfortunately, although a tiny set of steps might have repelled Mariah Carey, it did not hold back the Indian food connoisseurs of ‘Boro, all of whom wanted to come up to the VI table and get autographs from the unexpected Ps sitting at it. The restaurant realised this might become a bit annoying and, without being asked, came up with a solution. Which was to get a member of their staff to stand in front of our table to act as ‘security’. And to make his role clear, he was wearing a high-visibility vest. Which, ironically, only drew more attention to us. Oh look, people probably said to each other, there are two blokes off the telly, over there behind that lone man standing motionless inside a dimly lit restaurant wearing a bright yellow tabard.

Of more concern to me was that, as soon as we’d sat down, James’s phone had rung and he’d started a lengthy phone conversation with his girlfriend. This meant that Jeremy and I were left to make conversation. Which was a problem since, as you might remember, I was still in a petulant piss of a mood and didn’t want to talk to him.

The thing about giving someone the cold shoulder is, it often helps if they’re at least dimly aware of what you’re doing and why. Jeremy wasn’t. And I wasn’t about to tell him, because we were men in a curry house in Middlesbrough on a Friday night, trying to ignore the hi-vi wearing waiter’s arse that hovered above our tray of dips. We weren’t about to start talking about emotions. So instead I sat there furiously texting people, like a narky teenager. “Are you alright?” asked Jeremy in a personable way that only made me more furious with his inability to understand that I was being huffy. Yes, I’m fine, I hissed, staring intently at my mobile in the manner of a surly youth in a bus shelter.

Finally, May wrapped up his interminable phone conversation. At last. James was here to save us from conversational awkwardness with some jaunty observations about the quality of the chutney. Unfortunately for me, he’d been talking for so long our food was arriving. And this is when the naan bread arrived. This was not a naan in the sense you might imagine. It was not a loose ellipse of doughy goodness that could fit on a small silver plate with only a little overhang. What they had brought us that evening was an incomprehensibly huge schooner’s sail of bread, a thing so vast it could be used as a metric for how much rain forest had been destroyed that week, and which hung vertically from its own intricate tower of scaffolding. As two or three waiters lowered it into position, I realised with dread it was cutting off my one lifeline out of this terrible evening, shutting down all lines of communication with James May. A naan curtain had descended across the table. “Are you okay?” Clarkson asked. “You seem distant.” I’m fine, I insisted grumpily. For a brief moment it seemed we were on the world’s worst first date, stuck between a bouncer’s back and a vast wall of ghee sodden bread in a cosy cubical of our own conversational awkwardness.

I tore at the western edge of the epic bread in a frantic attempt to eat my way through to James on the other side but it was useless. I would need help. Oi May, I shouted, eat some of this bread. “What?” he said from somewhere deep within naania. I sent another five texts to other members of the team imploring them to join us and help me scoff my way to May. They didn’t reply. Jeremy and I ate in silence.

The curry, I seem to remember, was quite good. The item about the art gallery, I’m almost certain, was quite sh1t.

sniffpetrol.com/the-naan-bread/#.VVceAPlVikq
jalopnik.com/jeremy-clarkson-james-may-and-the-naan-bread-incident-1704516951

www.streetfire.net/video/242-top-gear-motoring-art-gallery-1_2001462.htm
www.streetfire.net/video/243-top-gear-motoring-art-gallery-2_2001463.htm

[RedMoon11]

The Slogans

The Time I Almost Got Top Gear's Hosts Murdered In America

Tales from Top Gear by Richard Porter  Friday, May 22nd, 2015

For 13 years I was the script editor on Top Gear. Here’s another boring story about that.

We weren’t very good with planning on Top Gear. The stuff we put loads of work into often turned out badly. Hence never-loved features like Barn Or Bin or the utter tossfest of Top Gear Stuntman. Whereas the things we didn’t really plan for often became unexpectedly good or turned out to be important. Hence the American road trip that spiralled into something so massive it couldn’t be edited to fit into a normal studio programme, earned a whole show to itself and accidentally invented the annual Top Gear not-Christmas special.

There are a couple of things people seem to remember from that inadvertent special. The cow on the roof of a Camaro being one. That one wasn’t planned at all. Jeremy thought of it in the field, possibly literally, and there weren’t any dead cows lying around so he rang the office back home and one of our researchers hammered the phones into the night until he found a nearby farmer with a no-longer-mooing body we could use. I often thought Top Gear had the most talented and dedicated production team in television and there’s your proof; even from 4000 miles away and at short notice, our people could source locate a stinking, bloated, rotten, disgusting cow corpse.

The second thing the American road trip is remembered for is the slogans daubed down the cars. Now that one was planned. It was planned by me. Sorry. I’d had this idea ages before for something called The Texas Smartcar Challenge in which a presenter was required to drive a bright pink Smart covered in jauntily liberal slogans across the Lone Star state and see how far they could get before they got lynched. Thing is, we’d have needed to ship the Smart over there, and fly our crews from the UK, and it all started to sound like a lot of time and expense and effort just to get someone’s head kicked in. So the idea went away until we started planning an American road trip and it became clear we might be passing through some places where ‘liberal’ is basically a swear word. I mentioned the slogans part of my Smart idea in a meeting. People seemed to like it. ‘So basically, you want us to be killed’ said Hammond with mock indignation. No, no, no, I’m sure it’ll be fine, I insisted.

I wrote some suggested slogans on strips of paper, divided these up between three envelopes which I gave to the crew, and waved everyone off to the airport. And then, having sent our plucky lads off to their fate, I bravely went on holiday to New York. While I was there I went for an afternoon drink with my friend Tracy, who’s from the American south. We’re actually filming in the south at the moment, I said jauntily. Yes, it’s all terribly amusing, I went on, we’re writing slogans down our cars and driving them through Alabama. Tracy looked aghast. ‘You’re doing what?’ she spluttered. No, no, it’s fine, I laughed. We’re just messing around, I’m sure it’ll just be a little bit awkward or something. ‘Trust me,’ she continued in that casually aggressive tone New York obliges its inhabitants to perfect. ‘I’m from down there, I know those people. They. Will. Fvcking. Kill. You.’ Oh dear me no, I said, trying to maintain an upbeat tone. I’m sure it’ll all be fine. Shortly afterwards my phone rang. Several times in fact. I can’t remember the specifics of what was said, but the words ‘properly angry’ and ‘fvcking scary’ might have been used and I think possibly Jeremy claimed they were ‘almost literally killed’.

I never imagined that some idiotic things daubed down three cars would get an actual reaction. Secretly, I was quite thrilled. Obviously, it’s easy to be thrilled when you’re 1000 miles up-country with your face in a bucket of mojito. Even so, it was quite remarkable. People still think we faked it, which is a shame. I can tell you it wasn’t a set-up. Those were real people who were really angry, all as a result of my stupid slogans idea. I’m only slightly ashamed to admit, it’s one of the proudest moments of my career.


sniffpetrol.com/the-slogans/#.VWIVnE_BzGd
jalopnik.com/the-time-i-almost-got-top-gears-hosts-murdered-in-ameri-1706321954

[RedMoon11]

60 Minutes Extra: "Top Gear" in Alabama

Uploaded on Oct 24, 2010
What happens if you scrawl offensive messages on your cars and drive through Alabama? The cast of "Top Gear" recalls how they aroused the fury of locals and how the situation got very ugly, very fast.


Run out of Alabama! - Offensive cars - Top Gear - Series 9 US Special - BBC

2007
As the boys (and the film crew) will now admit, this is the scariest challenge they ever faced in the history of the show. "Survival Challenge in Alabama": Drive through Alabama with offensive slogans painted on their cars and try not to get killed. Things are tense on the highway, then reach boiling point at a gas station.

[flatin5th - Knight of the NC]

Even more scary than Argentina?

[key]

I remember this time. It had not rained in a good while It was very hot. An 18 wheeler cattle carrier jack-knifed on I -10. killing a few. The store in the show is on highway 90. It is a few miles from my home. Robertsdale, Alabama is at the at the end of highway 90. I still find it ironic that they went by our house. My son and I had been enjoying the show since it started playing on BBC America. We both wish we had known they were visiting.

[RedMoon11]

Some say…

Tales from Top Gear by Richard Porter   Friday, June 5th, 2015

For 13 years I was script editor on Top Gear. Here is another boring story about that.

In headier times the Top Gear production office was a cheery place, full of the jocular, back-and-forth verbal tennis that tedious bores like to call ‘banter’. In particular, we had a great fondness for what you might call a ‘riff’ in which someone starts a gag and everyone escalates it in that way that keeps men bonded together without having to do anything as horrifying as talking about feelings. And it was from this tendency to amuse ourselves that the ‘some say…’ Stig intros were born.

It was 2005 and we were working on the sixth series of the show. On the whole, things were going quite well for Top Gear. So well, in fact, that efforts were being made to develop a US version of the programme. Executive producer Andy Wilman and I were in our shabby, scruffy corner of the office discussing this flattering development in a not-especially-serious way. ‘What are they going to make of The Stig over there?’ asked Wilman. ‘I heard…’ he continued in a preposterous, below-the-Mason-Dixon-line accent. ‘…that’s he’s a CIA robot experiment what has gone wrong.’ I spat imaginary tobacco into an invisible spittoon. ‘I heard he done got lasers for eyes,’ I said, like an insultingly bad impression of Uncle Jessie. ‘And if you looks at ‘em, they done burns through your brain.’ And on it went, probably for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, the riff wouldn’t die. Every so often, and triggered by nothing, someone would start it up again, assuming the deep fried southern accent to claim that their cousin reckoned The Stig was a government assassin or was made of Space Shuttle stuff or somethin’. Normally, titting around in the office stayed in the office for the very good reason that, as you might have noticed, it’s not very funny unless you’re there. But this one wouldn’t go away and, when we started writing links for the first show of the next series, it seeped into the script. Up until that point, The Stig has been introduced with a series of ghastly puns; ‘It’s time to introduce the GTI to the STI…G’ and so on. By the time we got to the wanton awfulness of ‘Mitsu-Stig-i’ it was high time we tortured the audience in a whole new way and the mythical claims of southern state conspiracy crazies seemed like a good starting point. All we needed to do was switch ‘I heard…’ for the broader ‘Some say…’, which gave the claims a certain vagueness, underlining that each statement was a curious rumour which Top Gear could neither confirm nor deny. Right from the start The Stig was always meant to be a man of mystery, and this seemed to fit well with this conceit. Although, obviously, it was also total bollocks.

I liked the new Stig introductions immensely, largely because I clung to this notion that The Stig was more than just a mute bloke in a crash helmet who appeared briefly to do a lap of the track. To my mind, he had a full character, which was mysterious, unusual and really strange. So I wrote a load of introductions to reflect this, the main point of them being that he lived in an exceedingly odd way and did exceedingly odd things. Over time they evolved so that The Stig became weirder and weirder. I liked the weirdness a lot, especially intros that suggested he had a full-size tattoo of his face on his face or kept a photo of his wallet in his wallet or was in some other way caught in a nonsensical logic loop of his own making. Every so often Jeremy would warn that things were getting too weird and it was time to pull it back. It was hard to argue with the bloke who had to stand in front of a massive audience and deliver this drivel but I used to counter that oddness was part of the whole Stig character. Also, the pattern we settled on tempered the abject stupidity of the first line with a topical gag in the second. Some weeks that was a gift because something funny or controversial was in the headlines and Stig could be dropped into a world of celebrity or politics he was plainly ill-equipped for, and some weeks it was a right arse ache because the news was full of war, death and pestilence, none of which could be considered fertile ground for introducing a man in a sh*t racing suit driving round in circles at high speed. Still, it was a good challenge and my aim was always to have a fully formed intro in the draft script when the presenters came in for our Tuesday writing session, the day before studio recording. If I’d hit the spot, Jeremy would read it, give an amused snort and move on. If the intro wasn’t strong enough there’d be a mumbling noise before he’d swivel around in his chair with the words, ‘I’m not sure about this…’ Then we’d sit around trying to think of something new during which Clarkson would charge through some guaranteed studio audience amusing options involving genitals, May would get caught up in a brilliantly over-complicated odyssey into Stig’s taste in crisps, and Hammond would remind us of the embarrassment inherent in a trip to a hauntingly cold, silent place available only to TV presenters in front of live audiences which he called ‘the unfunny moon’. Then we’d decide to claim that Stig once punched Princess Anne and move on.

I enjoyed this weird world we created around The Stig. In my head, he was single minded, stubborn and hilariously petulant. Specifically, a mix of Kimi Raikkonen, the keyboard player from Pet Shop Boys, and a 15 year old boy forced to go on holiday with his parents. I used to get quite defensive about other people messing with his on screen persona and we started to police how The Stig was used to promote the programme and associated commercial things. This was actually quite easy. No, The Stig wouldn’t be interested in soft drinks. No, The Stig wouldn’t wave to the camera. No, The Stig wouldn’t put on a funny hat. Less was more. One day Newsnight made a feeble item about that pub opening in a motorway services on the M40 and got a man in a crap knock-off Stig suit to go up to the bar and attempt to drink a pint. We were furious about this. They hadn’t asked permission and this was just the sort of thing The Stig wouldn’t do. I suggested we take revenge by inventing someone called ‘Jeremy Spaxman’ who was a heroin addict and a murderer, just to see how they liked having one of their lead characters mis-portrayed. We could monkey about with what The Stig did or didn’t do, but other people could not.

Likewise, we thought only we could write ‘some say…’ lines since it was our riff to begin with. Of course, by the same token they were ours to kill off and if anyone was going to come up with a new way to introduce The Stig, I thought it should be us. After a while I wondered if they were getting a bit tedious so, in between series’, I had a bit of a think and worked out this new introduction thing based around a triple rhyme. ‘He’s slick, he’s quick, he’s often covered in sick… It’s The Stig.’ That sort of thing. ‘He’s speedy, he’s needy, he’s in love with Cheryl Tweedy’, that was another one. Then I realised we’d need loads of them to keep it going and it all sounded not only far too difficult but also even more annoying. So I kept it to myself and quietly dumped the rhymes into the folder of sh*t ideas. Besides, I think people had got used to the way we did it and maybe even quite liked it.

Some say we came up with a distinctive and enduring way to introduce The Stig pretty much by accident and could never think of a better way to do it. And they’d be right.

sniffpetrol.com/2015/06/05/some-say/#.VXMEh89Vikp

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson says a thing

by Sniff Petrol   Thursday, June 11th, 2015


Jeremy Clarkson, yesterday

Jeremy Clarkson has said a thing.

The former Top Gear presenter said the thing in his newspaper column or on the radio, immediately prompting speculation that he could be about to do something or not do something or say another thing. Probably.

The thing is almost certain to fuel rumours that something something something colleagues James May and Richard Hammond blah blah large sum of money words words words Netflix.

Something something Chris Evans. Blah blah Jodie Kidd. Yadda yadda Philip Glennister etc etc etc same old sh*t we’ve written 26 times before.

Blah blah blah punching a producer cut and paste this paragraph from the last story about Jeremy Clarkson, and the 109 others before that.

Will this do? Good. Quick, get it up on the website.

© All newspapers online

sniffpetrol.com/2015/06/11/jeremy-clarkson-says-a-thing/#.VYGwokZgmMB

[RedMoon11]

Man gets new job

by Sniff Petrol   Wednesday, June 17th, 2015


Chris Evans, yesterday

Chris Evans has been announced as the new presenter of Top Gear, bringing a welcome new lease of life to the programme he will completely ruin.

Evans is a famously knowledgeable when it comes to cars and is sure to enliven the long-running show he wrecks with his complete lack of knowledge about cars.

The popular presenter is certain to bring some of the magic that made the brilliant TFI Friday so terrible, leading to the intriguing prospect of a re-born Top Gear made in that mould, which would surely become must-see TV that you would switch off immediately.

Evans is thought to be the ideal choice of presenter to retain Top Gear’s vast audience, none of whom will watch the show if he is at the helm.

‘I am 100 percent NOT going to be the new Top Gear presenter,’ said Evans. ‘And I can’t wait to be the new presenter of Top Gear.’

© The internet, yesterday

sniffpetrol.com/2015/06/17/man-gets-new-job/#.VYGwk0ZgmMB

[RedMoon11]

How We Made Top Gear

sniffpetrol - Richard Porter
6/25/15 1:36pm


Illustration Sam Woolley

The very last Clarkson, Hammond & May edition of Top Gear will be broadcast this Sunday and sniffpetrol – by day, mild mannered former Top Gear script editor Richard Porter – explains how they used to put the show together and what it was like to be at the cutting edge of cocking about.

There we go then. The sun has set on what I imagine we will one day call Old New Top Gear.

Now we sit patiently with seatbelts fastened and backrests in the upright position, awaiting developments from New New Top Gear / The Jeremy Clarkson Car Hour / James May’s Amphitheatre Of Cheese.

Whatever happens next, it’s going to be quite different from what I like to think scholars will one day call Top Gear Classic. It might be made in quite a different way too. I don’t know. I only know the way we used to make the show, which was with a mixture of sweat, panic, disagreement and potato snacks.

  On the programme I hope historians will soon refer to as Top Gear – Original Taste the most important thing for any given item was, unsurprisingly, the idea. If we’re talking about a track test, that idea was always pretty simple; is it an interesting car and can we say moderately entertaining things about it while slithering around a runway for six to eight minutes?

Ideas for the big, three presenter films were rather more difficult. Coming up with suggestions wasn’t the hard part, it was the process that followed in which the idea would be prodded and dismantled and subjected to the same line of questioning it might receive from a four-year-old; Why? Why? No really, why? Why were we going there? Why were we taking those cars? Why were we doing this at all?

For those items in which we bought old rotboxes or built something of our own, it was important to have some headline question we were answering or some logical problem we were setting out to solve. Can you buy a car for £100 or less? Can you build your own amphibious car? Can we alleviate travel chaos brought on by snow using machines that normally sit idle in winter?

You needed the question for the studio introduction to give some line of logic, some small reason why we were craving your attention for the next half an hour or so. Once the item was up and running you could drift away from that original point, though I believe the best Top Gear stories never forgot it.

If the idea couldn’t pass muster in the office, in particular at the hands of chief scrutineer Clarkson who worried about this stuff more than anyone on the team, then it didn’t happen. Case in point, we once had this notion that we would re-invent the fire engine. Why were we doing that? Because it seemed like they were too big and too slow and therefore took too long to get to emergencies. The solution was obvious; Top Gear would build a small, high performance fire truck.

The trouble is, if you make a fire engine smaller there’s no room on board for all the ladders, hoses and burly men it needs to do its job. So it has to be big. And then it can’t get through gaps in traffic. So you make it smaller. And then it can’t do its job. And then…

We sat in a meetings for hours debating this round in circles before concluding with heavy heart that the ideal design was a fire engine, as in the sort we already have. The whole idea was thrown in the bin. It would have been easy to have plugged on simply for the sake of seeing Richard Hammond trying to fit a massive ladder onto the roof of a tiny van, but really we’d have been doing it purely for the jokes and, much though it may have seemed otherwise, such brazen comedy chasing was never enough for Top Gear.

An idea had to be better than that and, assuming that it was strong enough to withstand being debated and dismantled in the office, the production team would then crack on with finding cars, scouting locations and doing all the things necessary to make it happen. It’s all well and good saying that, for example, you’re going to re-invent the helicopter and to do so you’re going to need four camels and an exploding gazebo in a westerly facing garden but it isn’t going to happen without the hardest working, most dedicated and talented production team in television. Fortunately, that’s what we had. Even more fortunately, I was only joking about that helicopter thing.

While the ground work was being done, the next job was to script the item. It was sometimes complained that Top Gear became ‘too scripted’ which was the internet’s way of saying too set-up, too pre-planned, too close to a cack-handed comedy sketch. In truth, all TV shows are scripted. Obviously that’s true of drama shows like Game Of Thrones because dragons are heavily unionised and won’t come out of their trailer unless everything is agreed in advance. But ‘reality’ shows are scripted too, and so are documentaries and improv and the weather report. A television programme with no script at all would be a mess. A script doesn’t have to mean every single moment is written down in advance, it can be simply a series of points that lets everyone on the crew how we’re going to start, where we’re going to go, and what we hope might happen.

For a Top Gear track test, the script might have been pretty detailed. It would have presenter words on it, maybe a few chewy metaphors, and it would attempt to pace the item by deciding which lines were voice over, which were in vision, when the car would be moving, when it would be static and so on. Yet even this could change radically on the day, especially if a car revealed new facets or the presenter simply changed their mind on something.

A three header item out in the field would be much looser. Sometimes so loose a director would read the script and slowly sigh the words, Is that it? Ideally, there’d be a studio introduction that set out the logic of the story, some attempt to structure the start, maybe a few choice gags for each presenter to attack his colleagues’ choice of cars (though they preferred to keep the really good ones to themselves and unleash them like Indiana Jones’s whip when least expected) and then a broad attempt to order the item’s activities. Even so, one of the most common words on a Top Gear script was a vague, director-baiting place holder that simply said, ‘whatever’.

The actual process for writing scripts, or at least sitting down to fill in the gaps with ‘whatever’, took several forms. Sometimes Jeremy would get a rush of blood to the head and crack on with it on his own, then email me a first draft with a simple note at the top; ‘ADD FACTS AND GAGS’. Sometimes one or more of us would go over to his flat near the Top Gear office and work on it together. Clarkson would usually drive the computer, jabbing awkwardly at the keyboard with a single rigid digit on each hand, like he was trying to CPR a rat.

His ungainly typing style disguised his immense ability as the fastest writer I’ve ever worked with, rapidly producing first draft words that were sharper, tighter and funnier than most word jockeys could manage after 20 attempts. Every so often he’d pause as he searched for a chunky analogy to illustrate a point and we’d spend a minute or two bouncing gags back and forth, trying to make each other laugh. A lot of Top Gear writing was based around men in a room trying to make each other laugh.

Eventually, the script would be in some sort of workable shape, the gold plated unicorns would have been sourced, and we’d be in a position to film the damn thing. For this we would need three film crews – one for each star car in case they got split up and all the better to shoot the three way chats while allowing plenty of editing options to cut out the waffling bits – and a large van full of snack items.

Once the item was shot, it would disappear into the edit suite where over many weeks it would be diced and sliced and finessed into the finished item over which voiceover lines would be dubbed.

During our usual on-air routine, voice overs were done on a Monday evening the week of transmission, each presenter taking their turn to go into the recording booth while the other two loafed around in the control room, saying unhelpful things over the talkback loop, writing lurid slogans on other people’s scripts and generally behaving like children. Restless, middle-aged, deliberately annoying children.

Tuesday was writing day. In advance, I’d hash together a first draft studio script, pulling together the planned intros for each film, adding some thoughts for discussions out of them, and doing the ‘housekeeping’ of adding sections like the ‘Tonight….’ menu, the Stig ‘some say’ lines and the guest introduction. Then the presenters would arrive and we’d start the process of refining, revising or completely re-writing the words during which the three of them would read my jokes and either laugh, in which case I would inwardly fist pump, or say ‘hmm, not sure about that’, in which case I would inwardly sob, though outwardly I would stand behind them at the computer and do neither of those things.

At some point in the morning we’d turn our attention to the massive slick of press releases and pictures laid out on the floor behind us and the presenters would begin reading out things and firing one-liners at each other, the best bits of which I’d attempt to write down and later type up into bullet points from which the rough shape of the news segment would emerge.

Then, once the script was deemed satisfactory, and there were enough items in the news document, we’d sit down in front of the whole production team and read through our homework. If they laughed at the jokes, we’d go home happy. If the material fell flat on its arse we’d despondently go back to the computer and keep working.

Either way, we’d fetch up at the studio the next morning and Jeremy would thunder into the crappy presenters’ room at the back of our shabby Portakabin with a dozen new script tweaks, suggestions and jokes. The rest of us might turn up on a Wednesday morning with one vague thought for something that could be improved; only Jeremy would have lain awake all night worrying over tiny details and agonising over the smallest point until he’d got it right. Top Gear might sometimes have seemed like a big, freewheeling, slobbery, shambolic mess but you’d be amazed at the attention to detail. Someone once asked me what it was like to write on the show and the only way I could explain it was to say that we could easily lose 40 minutes arguing whether ‘raspberries’ was a funnier word than ‘hat’.

On those Wednesday mornings at Dunsfold we’d spend another couple of hours having debates about such things followed by a technical rehearsal in the studio, a spot of lunch and then all hands on deck. Are the presenters dressed? Is the audience in? Are the machines recording? Then it’s show time.

Or at least, it was. Maybe one day it will be again. Who knows how Top Gear and its pattern parts replica might turn out in the future. For all concerned, I just hope the production process is something like it was on the show we might one day come to call Top Gear – The Golden Years: Disorganised, exhausting, stupid and a simply enormous amount of fun.

Illustration Sam Woolley


jalopnik.com/how-we-made-top-gear-1713882209?rev=1435253790404

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Ex-Top Gear presenters go mail order

Posted in News by Sniff Petrol on Friday, July 31st, 2015

 
Some men, yesterday

Former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are to star in a new Amazon car show which will arrive next year, as long as you order it before 5pm today.

Anyone signing up for the new Amazon programme will have Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May posted to them as soon as they are available. ‘Shipping for Richard Hammond is free,’ said an Amazon spokesman. ‘I’m afraid postage for Jeremy costs extra.’

‘I will be dispatched as soon as I’m ready,’ said TV’s James May, speaking on a phone that no one bought from inside an enormous warehouse beside the M1. ‘Is this item a gift?’ he added mysteriously

The actual contents of the new show are under wraps which are about five times the size of the thing inside them. However, rumoured subjects for the forthcoming series include, is a car faster across Europe than a funny review of a David Hasselhoff album, is a Range Rover better off road than a well-publicised day of bargain priced crap you don’t want, and which is the best hot hatch, the Golf GTI or this pack of plastic floor protectors to go under chair legs which are so weirdly cheap the postage is more than the value of the item?

Fans have been told not to worry about being in when the new series starts as it can always be left with a neighbour.


sniffpetrol.com/2015/07/31/ex-top-gear-presenters-go-mail-order/#.VbxjUPlVikp

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[RedMoon11]

There’s been an accident: we’ve struck TV gold

As his new book takes readers behind the scenes of Top Gear, the show’s former script editor Richard Porter confesses that the show’s best moments were often unplanned

Richard Porter   Published: 25 October 2015
 

Joint assignments for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May were an unexpected hit (Planet Photos/BBC)



THE programme we will soon come to call the Old New Top Gear was made in many states of mind. Panic, terror, mirth, joy, glee, confusion. But over the course of the 13 years and 22 series, the most constant and enduring emotion was surprise.

We were surprised that people were watching our poky little car show. We were surprised that three men bickering, blustering and falling over also had the sort of genuine and watchable chemistry you simply couldn’t synthesise. We were surprised when things worked out, when they didn’t and then surprised when actually our biggest failures were also our most beloved successes. We were often, as you might have gathered, a shambles.

You could tell as much from the working conditions under which Top Gear was made. Our office was home to a great deal of industry and contained a great many very bright, very talented people yet it appeared to have been recently vacated by a band of especially messy pigs whose last gesture before leaving was to bomb the place.

Our production office at the studio in Dunsfold, Surrey, was even worse, being bleak and cold and of such rank odour that once, when an owl got into the building, flapped around a bit and died, we only noticed the corpse because it made the place smell nicer.

Most of us on the team found some strange comfort in labouring away inside a manky, messy assimilation of a cheap student bedsit because it forced us to keep our feet on the ground and our tetanus boosters up to date. As the show’s audience grew, you might have expected us to be working from offices lined in oak and ermine yet nothing could have been further from the truth.

Besides, we were still trying to get our heads around the global success we had accidentally become. In our minds we were still a very local, very British motoring programme beavering away in a corner of BBC2. In the very early stages of planning we’d been told by Beeb bosses that if we could get to 3m viewers, we’d justify our existence.

By the end our global audience was said to be 350m and people in suits told us we were being flogged to 212 territories worldwide. Now, I’ve checked and there are only about 195 countries on the planet, so I can only assume that some places were accidentally buying us twice, the way a household might when you haven’t agreed whose turn it is to get bread. Even so, this was nice to know, as much as it was a great surprise.

The programme’s vast reach and audience was always a shock, especially since you can’t actually see 350m people watching your show, or at least keeping an eye on it while ironing the dog or deflea-ing their work shirts. It would be easy to assume the numbers were fiction until we turned up on location and within 20 minutes drew a crowd large enough to populate a small town.

People really do seem to like us, we would think, and this in itself would be a surprise. After all, what were they watching? Three middle-aged blokes driving around a bit and calling each other idiots. On paper it doesn’t sound too promising. Yet in real life, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May had a natural chemistry that made them hilariously funny.

This was only enhanced through the prism of TV as they bickered and boasted and found each other intermittently irritating in the way only friends can. Perhaps they reminded people of their real mates. Perhaps they seemed like the kind of mates they wanted to have. Either way, we were quite surprised that people wanted to watch this strange and badly dressed threesome doing whatever daft things they’d thought of that week.

Of course, this being Top Gear, it didn’t occur to us to put them together in the field until the fourth series. But then strategic planning never was our strong suit. The cross-continent races and the cheap car challenges took their sweet time to arrive and the very idea of making a Christmas special came about entirely by accident.


The Stig (Todd Anthony/BBC)

We could never truly acknowledge that our greatest successes crept up and took us by surprise, because we couldn’t plan not to plan, but it was self-evident that the things that worked best were those we set out not to do. Whereas any idea we formulated meticulously typically fell onto its bottom in an undignified and unamusing way, hence the India special and the best-forgotten laugh vacuum of Top Gear Stunt Man.

I suppose we shouldn’t have expected any more from ourselves. We were, after all, the show that began life by making a pilot episode so bad the BBC, showing a weary tolerance that would become the hallmark of its dealings with Top Gear, told us to go away and have another go.

Which we did, only to turn in something that managed to be even more terrible. That’s not to suggest that the entire Top Gear team was a gang of blithering incompetents, because nothing could be further from the truth. It was, in fact, a staff of rare intelligence and dedication that still managed to form a freewheeling and chaotic whole. We changed our minds, we changed our opinions, we changed our studio to make it bigger, then accidentally filled it with old cars and so much rubbish that it actually became smaller than the old one. We were, as someone once had it, a brilliant dysfunctional family.

Just as much as we surprised ourselves when things didn’t work and yet actually worked out marvellously, our longtime quest was to surprise our audience. In the early days this was relatively easy, because viewers didn’t expect to see grandmothers doing doughnuts in a Honda S2000 or to find Jeremy driving a large Vauxhall from the back seat.


May, Porter, centre, tries out a gag on Clarkson on set 

We did this sort of thing so other programmes didn’t have to. Also, other programmes were the News and the Antiques Roadshow and they probably didn’t want to. The main point was, no one else was up to this stuff. The problem was, you can’t surprise people for ever because soon they learn to expect the unexpected. Or, to put it another way, once you’ve shown people that you can turn a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle and pilot a pick-up truck across the English Channel, they’ll believe that nothing is impossible, short of James whipping off his rubber mask to reveal that he was played by Meryl Streep. And that, I’m afraid, had to remain a secret. Our power to surprise others, if not ourselves, was diminished, but I like to think we still delivered the occasional broadside, even if it was just confounding expectation by not setting something on fire for once.

Then in March we managed to deliver the ultimate surprise when Top Gear suddenly and unexpectedly clattered to a halt. I won’t go into the why and the how of all that again. I think it might have been covered in a couple of the newspapers. All I can add is, after living for so long in a state of constant surprise, for those of us who worked on the show this was regrettable but hardly unexpected.

After all, what did we imagine? That the show would end with calm and dignity? Whether by design or by accident, we’d created our own little world of chaos, calamity, madness and foolishness. It was, therefore, absolutely to be expected that Top Gear would die just as it had lived. In a strange and surprising way.

And on that Bombshell, by Richard Porter, is published by Orion, priced £20

Click to buy for £17, including p&p, from the ST Bookshop

Five surprising Top Gear successes

PUTTING THE THREE HOSTS TOGETHER ON LOCATION
In the original plan the presenters were together in the studio and went their separate ways to film the segments. It took four series for us to realise they might be quite funny if we shoved them together on location. Even then, it was a cautious experiment. The result, to our surprise, became a bedrock of the show.

THE SPECIALS
There was a never a plan to make annual Christmas specials. We simply went to America to film a road trip, belatedly realised it was so massive it needed a whole show to itself and, hey presto, the Top Gear Special was born completely by accident. Originally, they weren’t even on at Christmas either.


The Reliant Robin space shuttle (BBC)

THE RELIANT ROBIN SPACE SHUTTLE
Jeremy Clarkson thought it was a stupid idea. Our money people spluttered at the quote for building the largest non-commercial rocket Europe had yet seen. The finished craft failed to detach from its booster and smashed into the ground. Yet despite its tortured genesis and ultimate failure, the Reliant shuttle became one of our most beloved stories.


The three presenters were sent to exotic locations for the one-off specials (Ellis O’Brien/BBC)

THE GLOBAL AUDIENCE
We never planned to have a massive worldwide audience. We were a silly little British programme hidden away on BBC2. Worldwide success happened by accident. Besides, if we’d tried to be global we’d have had Clarkson shouting “trunk” instead of boot, Richard Hammond speaking fractured Mandarin and James May in Dutch national costume. It would have been inept and horrendous.

THE STIG
Having a mute, faceless racing driver was Clarkson’s idea. I didn’t think it would work. The whole thing almost stalled after we decided to call him the Gimp. The BBC realised this was a bit rude and the man inside the suit objected, so we hastily renamed him after the nickname for new kids at Clarkson’s old school, with no idea that the Stig would become such an icon.


www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/ingear/cars/article1622368.ece
www.driving.co.uk/news/top-gear-behind-the-scenes-with-script-editor-richard-porter/

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Read more at - And On That Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of TG

jamesmayboard.proboards.com/thread/4274/on-bombshell-inside-madness-genius?page=1


The day we tried to get a monkey to drive a car on Top Gear

jamesmayboard.proboards.com/post/298725/thread
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/6695347/Juicy-extracts-from-Top-Gear-mans-entertaining-new-book.html

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Richard Porter, Top Gear script editor: 'Every so often I had to stop to check I really was getting paid for this'


RICHARD PORTER WROTE THE SCRIPT FOR TOP GEAR

By Alex Robbins, consumer editor, telegraph cars
21 DECEMBER 2015 • 11:46AM

My First Car

It’s almost six months since the last new episode of Top Gear to be helmed by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May was aired on BBC Two, following the fracas with a producer that led to Clarkson being suspended and, eventually, sacked.

But while Clarkson, Hammond and May were the famous faces of the show, there was an army of back-room staff who made Top Gear what it was.

As the programme’s script editor, Richard Porter helped to give the presenters the jokes, witticisms and catchphrases we all remember today. Porter has just published a book telling the full behind-the-scenes story of Top Gear; here, he gives Telegraph Cars a taste of that story, and tells us about his own car history.

So, Richard – tell us about your first car.

It was a Ford Ka. I bought it because all the car magazines said it had a brilliant chassis. The week after I got it, I gave a friend a lift and she said, "Oh, this is that car designed by women, for women isn’t it?". I was a bit crestfallen. Although the chassis really was very good.

How old were you when you started getting interested in cars?

Pretty much from birth, I think. My son is almost two now and his favourite word is car, so I fear it’s genetic and I’ve inadvertently passed it on.


It was Porter who came up with many of Clarkson, Hammond & May's most memorable lines                            CREDIT: TODD ANTHONY/BBC

Can you remember what kicked off your love of cars?

My dad was into cars so probably that. The magazines lying around the house, the grand prix on telly every other Sunday. It all contributed. If he’d been really interested in circuses maybe I’d be an elephant tamer by now.

What was your first crash – if you’ve ever had one?

The first and, to date, most spectacular crash was in an Audi TT on a roundabout by the M5 in Birmingham. I lost the back end, slid into a kerb, and rolled it twice. It belonged to Audi and I’d borrowed the keys from my boss. It was the flashest car I’d driven in my short career in the car industry. Everyone was nice enough not to shout at me for it. Shortly afterwards, they recalled the TT for a handling flaw and rebuilt the roundabout, which I tried to claim as some vindication for my obvious ineptitude.

Which car do you own now?

We’ve got a Mercedes GLA family car and a Fiat 500 Twinair, but my favourite is my new toy, an end-of-the-line Land Rover Defender Heritage. It’s slow and noisy and old fashioned and I love it with all my heart. Plus, it’s ideal for the many mountains of north London.


A Land Rover Defender Heritage is Richard's current pride and joy

Which car do you most regret selling?

I had an immaculate late Nineties Jaguar XJR, the old-fashioned one with the supercharged V8. It was black and had the whiff of the gentleman thug about it. After a while I realised I wasn’t using it much, so I flogged it to Richard Hammond off the telly. I sort of wish I hadn’t, but at least I know it went to a good home.

What’s the worst car you’ve owned, and why?

I bought an £800 Jeep Cherokee to haul the dog around. Various things on it didn’t work properly, including the brakes. I liked it all the same. The worst new car was a Mitsubishi Evolution X I had as a long-term test car. A bumpy, noisy, charmless oaf’s chariot.

What’s the dream car, money no object?

I have a theory that people who are really into cars can’t answer this one. There’s just too much choice. Although I do quite like the idea of going to the supermarket in a Bugatti Veyron.

What’s your biggest pet peeve when you’re driving?

General inattention, I suppose. Also, that thing where people hold their phone in front of their face as if that means they aren’t actually on the phone. It’s the mark of a true moron.

Turbo or supercharger?

You can’t beat a supercharger, can you? Unless you’re falling out of a plane, in which case a parachute would be more useful.

Straight-line speed or handling?

Ideally a bit of both please.


A Jaguar XJR like this one is the car Richard most regrets selling

Manual or automatic?

Depends on the car. A Fiat 500 isn’t very nice as an auto. A Rolls-Royce Phantom would be completely ruined by a manual. Unless they supplied a man to change the gears for you.

Front-, rear- or four-wheel-drive?

Rear is nice, but whatever’s appropriate. Did you know they once hatched a plan to fit the Aston Martin V12 to the Range Rover? The engine went in, but there was no room for the front driveshafts so the prototype was a two tonne, 450 horsepower SUV with rear-drive only. They decided this might be a bit too lively for most customers.

What’s your most memorable experience in a car? (Keep it clean!)

Driving alongside the Pacific Ocean outside LA in a Corvette at sunset. Or driving down the winding road towards Brecon in a Defender, windows down, music up, evening sunlight across the hills. Or maybe driving my son home from hospital. At a cautious 5mph the whole way.

If you could pick one memory to sum up your time working on Top Gear, what would it be?

There are just too many memories. Making each other laugh, being allowed to do remarkable and ridiculous things, and every so often stopping to check I really was getting paid for this.

Spill the beans for us: who came up with the idea of The Stig?

It was something Jeremy and our producer Andy Wilman confected on the basis that racing drivers are boring and you don’t want to hear their opinions. He was originally going to be called "The Gimp" until the BBC realised that was a bit rude and made us change it.

And finally, do you know yet if you’ll be working with Clarkson, Hammond and May again, or on the new series of Top Gear?

I’ve been asked, but I don’t want it to interfere with my flower arranging classes.

Richard Porter’s book, “And On That Bombshell: Inside the madness and genius of Top Gear”, is currently available to buy online and in all good bookshops.

www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/richard-porter-top-gear-interview/