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Post by dit on May 9, 2012 22:18:12 GMT
Jeremy and Andy Wilman were on stage this afternoon at the Golden Rose Awards (Rose d'Or) in Switzerland. Don’t know if it was a speech or they were answering questions, but the Rose d’Or passed on what they were saying in real time, and I found some of the points quite interesting:
AW Top Gear had been going about 30 years before we for hold of it and it had become very old fashioned
AW what the three guys do is actually doable, yes you'd need money but it's all possible which adds to public appeal
JC we can tell James May we need 15 seconds of chat and he can go for hours. And try to convince you it was just 15 secs
AW adapting it is tricky as there's hardly a format there
JC broadcasters have to buy into the Top Gear format long term to give the presenters time to develop a genuine relationship
AW last research said our audience figures were 48 % female which is odd considering the state of the presenters!
JC a lot of car critics and shows attempt to review cars but ultimately they're identical. We look at what you can DO with a car
JC on transmedia - that's for other people than us. Our job is to make a TV programme and we don't want to butcher the mother ship
JC James has a good description of Top Gear - everything you see MUST be true, but isn't necessarily real
AW the Top Gear team is a dysfunctional happy family, the turnover is very low
JC I don't think a lot of the territories get some of the finer bits of British humour, but they enjoy the cinematography
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Post by jmsquared on May 9, 2012 22:31:51 GMT
Interesting. Thanks Dit.
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Post by FizzyLogician on May 9, 2012 22:41:04 GMT
AW last research said our audience figures were 48 % female which is odd considering the state of the presenters! False modesty, or are they truly clueless? ;D |
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Post by amie8 on May 9, 2012 22:54:20 GMT
Que?
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Post by pie on May 10, 2012 0:10:33 GMT
AW last research said our audience figures were 48 % female which is odd considering the state of the presenters! False modesty, or are they truly clueless? ;D Why do they think the show's popularity has anything to do with the presenters? Don't they realise that approximately 48% of the female population are petrolheads?  I vote for false modesty. ;D |
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Post by jmsquared on May 10, 2012 1:59:56 GMT
Looked it up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling. I think he means he doesn't want dilute the brand or oversell it, although I would have thought quite a lot of "transmedia" TG is already happening. So, I'm with you Amie8....Que? |
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Post by jacqui on May 10, 2012 19:38:13 GMT
TG has won the lifetime achievement award ;D Actually Jeremy isn't sure - but its an award of some sort!!!! |
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Post by FizzyLogician on May 10, 2012 20:00:35 GMT
Jeremy's tweets:
Amazing news. Top Gear just won the big lifetime achievement award at the Rose D'Or.
Actually, I'm not sure it is a lifetime achievement award. But it's an award of some sort, that's for sure.
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Post by amie8 on May 10, 2012 22:18:30 GMT
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Post by dit on May 10, 2012 22:26:06 GMT
More info from the Rose d'Or website. The 2012 Honorary Rose Award was presented to cult BBC production Top Gear and accepted by the show’s inimitable host Jeremy Clarkson. The show is aired in 198 territories making it a huge international success and an inspiration to format creators around the world. After joking that "approximately 7 million cars had to be destroyed to win this Award" Clarkson said that "this is the best job in the world and I hope I can do it forever, thank you very much for this honour."The discussion I mentioned earlier was a forum session www.rosedor.ch/en/detail/news_en/top-gears-recipe-for-success/This was the original publicity www.rosedor.ch/en/detail/news_en/top-gear-comes-to-the-rose-dor-festival/And here are some photos    |
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Post by amie8 on May 10, 2012 22:32:02 GMT
Hmmm...can a show with an audience of 350 million really be called a "cult BBC production"?
Or was that a misprint?
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Post by Wyvern on May 10, 2012 22:50:49 GMT
I think 'cult' can be legitimately applied to Top Gear in much the same way as it can to shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who - each have huge global followings, instantly recognisable iconography, fan gatherings and merchandising aimed at this faithful body of fans. What makes a show 'cult' isn't how many people watch it but how those people react. The element of cult arises when a show can arouse the kind of devotion across its fandom that shows like Top Gear have - especially when you consider that many of those 350 million viewers may well not have a legitimate means of receiving the show in the first place  Anyway. The Honorary Rose is a massive, internationally significant award and the boys deserve to be hugely congratulated. Well done, the lot of them! |
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Post by amie8 on May 10, 2012 22:55:17 GMT
I was trying to make a bad joke, really...
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Post by Wyvern on May 10, 2012 23:16:55 GMT
I was trying to make a bad joke, really... I gathered, but I've seen people raise the 'how can a show watched by this many people be a cult' point before and it's always struck me as a bit odd. Though of course it never crossed my mind that you might ever consider even contemplating that possible misprint...  |
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Post by dit on May 11, 2012 0:07:21 GMT
I just really hope that this award gets a great deal of publicity - positive publicity, that is.
The British press always seems so keen to have a pop at Top Gear and its presenters. It would be good to think that for once the papers would just say, "OK guys, for once we'll let you have this one. You've done good, as has the BBC".
Why am I not holding my breath?
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Post by antonia on May 11, 2012 8:35:41 GMT
I was trying to make a bad joke, really... I gathered, but I've seen people raise the 'how can a show watched by this many people be a cult' point before and it's always struck me as a bit odd. Though of course it never crossed my mind that you might ever consider even contemplating that possible misprint... A cult always implies loonies.The cult of TG would just be people wearing flowery shirts,driving loud cars and saying "In the world" in a loud booming voice. TG is a place that doesn't need contemplating or analyzing it just is there.(Like Coronation Street!) |
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Post by FizzyLogician on May 12, 2012 14:12:53 GMT
Jezza accepting the Honorary Rose Award.  (thanks to justjezza on tmblr) |
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Post by crumbs on May 12, 2012 14:54:36 GMT
Jezza accepting the Honorary Rose Award. (thanks to justjezza on tmblr) He looks just a little bit excited! |
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Post by dit on May 12, 2012 16:44:15 GMT
Yep, I think he might be quite pleased.
Either that, or he's already thought of some amusing usage for the award, mainly involving either James, Richard or possibly both (though not at the same time).
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Post by dit on May 21, 2012 0:57:28 GMT
Jeremy's take on the experience, according to his column in the Sunday Times. (Many, many thanks to controlspecimen on FG for this)
Girls, gongs and JR - if only I'd worn a jockstrap
May 20, 2012
All awards ceremonies are the same. You sit on an uncomfortable chair for seven hours, watching an endless succession of orange people you don't recognise getting gongs for their contribution to God knows what, and then, when it's your turn, you either have to look pleased that someone else has beaten you, or you have to bound on stage and, through gritted teeth, say that you couldn't have won by yourself. When, in your heart of hearts, you know you could. And indeed have.
The hugely prestigious Rose d'Or festival in Switzerland is different, though. Very different. As different as the petal of a cornflower is from the crankshaft of an American monster truck.
I was there because Top Gear had been picked for a gong. And the first indication that the evening might be a bit unusual came when I opened the obligatory goody bag. At this year's Oscars the nominees were given tickets to go on safari in Botswana, a watch, beauty products and a testicular checkup. In Switzerland I was given a tube of toothpaste.
I was then ferried in a smallish Vauxhall to the red carpet, which was a teeming mass of guests, none of whom seemed to have understood the dress code. Either that, or in Switzerland "black tie" means "anything you fancy, up to and including army boots and a jockstrap".
Feeling a trifle overdressed, I was ushered by an enthusiastic PR type with a clipboard to a waiting camera crew. The interviewer, a deliciously pretty Swiss girl, plainly had not the first clue who I was. But I'd been presented to her so she had to say something. And what she said was: "Eeeeerm?" Since there was no suitable answer to that, I was guided by my elbow to the make-up room, where an enormous German woman pointed to a small pimple on my nose and said to everyone within 500 yards: "Wow. That is a big spot." She set to work with a trowel, and 15 minutes later I was on my way to the green room.
Here I expected to be surrounded by the greats from international television. Simon Cowell. Jay Leno. Piers Morgan. And that madwoman from Homeland. But the only two people I recognised were Larry Hagman and Kim Wilde. As we chatted, I was fitted with an earpiece and a microphone and then I was pushed on stage.
It wasn't what I was expecting. Instead of a lectern from where I could deliver my acceptance speech, there was a sofa, adjacent to a massively breasted woman behind a desk. I took the applause from the very large audience, checked out the position of the cameras and sat down.
Now I don't know why, and with hindsight I see it was extremely arrogant, but I assumed the big-breasted woman would speak to me in English. She did not. To my dismay, she addressed me in one of the many languages I don't speak: German.
Happily, a rough translation of what she was saying started filtering through my earpiece. Unhappily, I couldn't make out any of the actual words. So in my right ear I had the Swiss woman speaking in German, and in the left one I had an unseen translator speaking in inaudible tinny English. Small wonder the United Nations is so useless at getting anything done.
Just as I thought things could not get any more confusing, she produced a pair of blacked-out spectacles, told me to put them on and then played Prince singing Little Red Corvette. You may remember that scene in the movie Lost in Translation when Bill Murray appears on a Japanese chat show and has no clue what's going on. Well, that's how I felt.
Mercifully, I was soon allowed to remove my glasses, and there in front of me was an Australian girl from the second Transformers film carrying my award. There was applause and then a man with a clipboard took me backstage, past Larry Hagman and back to my seat.
It wasn't over. No sooner had I sat down than that man with a clipboard was back. "Schnell, schnell!" he said. "You must go back on stage." Once there, I was given a massive bunch of flowers and told to stand at the back for reasons that were unclear.
Then they became clear. The big-breasted woman announced the arrival of a newcomer. The audience went wild. And out tottered an elderly gentleman, who began to make a speech. Well, when I say a speech, it wasn't really. A speech has peaks and troughs. It has pauses and moments of light relief. This had none of those things. It was as if he'd been invited on stage to read out every single entry on Wikipedia. Or to count from one to one billion.
After 20 minutes of standing under the hot lights, with my face planted in a hay fever factory, and wishing I'd opted for the jockstrap rather than my heavy suit, I started to feel quite dizzy. But still the man was droning on. And I know enough about how Autocues work to know he wasn't even a third of the way through.
I tried to focus on something important. At first I wondered why the Autocue was being projected in widescreen. Then I worked it out. In German, when "Danube steamship company captain" is one word, you can't have a 4:3 screen or nothing will fit. Having solved this riddle, I started to see if it was possible to will yourself to death.
Luckily, before I succeeded, a woman I did not recognise leapt up from the front row of the audience, thanked the man and took an award from the Transformers girl, and that was that.
Afterwards, Larry Hagman was confused. He'd flown all the way from Los Angeles and hadn't won anything. I had, though, so I decided to hit the after-show party. Here a slim and well-dressed Dutchman invited me to spend the night with him "disco dancing". I made my excuses and left.
Back in my room I watched Swiss television. It's not like ours in any way. Which is probably why they gave a gong to Top Gear.
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Post by pie on May 21, 2012 2:27:00 GMT
That was hilarious, thanks for posting. ;D
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I love a man who can handle a gun 
