‘Jeremy Clarkson is Top Gear!’

Fans begin online petition demanding reinstatement of BBC show host.

LONDON: Nearly 450,000 fans from around the world have backed a petition, calling for British presenter Jeremy Clarkson to be reinstated to his job hosting the Top Gear motoring show, after the BBC suspended him following a ‘fracas’ with a producer.

An online petition demanding the BBC reinstate Clarkson had attracted 442,610 supporters from all around the globe by Wednesday afternoon. “The BBC will become irrelevant very quickly in the USA without Top Gear; be careful,” wrote one signatory Fred Bertsch from Denver, Colorado. “Jeremy Clarkson is Top Gear!” said Austrian Karl-Johann Reitmaier.

Renowned for his outspoken remarks and acerbic attitude towards ‘political correctness’, Clarkson was suspended by the BBC on Tuesday, with media reporting he had thrown a punch at a producer following a row about food.

Clarkson was already on a final warning over accusations last year that he had used racist language while filming the show. “He’s been involved in a bit of a dust-up but I don’t think it’s that serious,” co-presenter James May told BBC.

In an official statement, the BBC said the show would not be aired this Sunday and the corporation’s news website said it was unlikely the other two remaining episodes would be transmitted. The Guardian newspaper said that could leave the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, facing a multi-million pound bill from foreign broadcasters for failing to deliver the episodes on time.

The presenter and his employers have been forced to apologise on a number of occasions. Clarkson wrote in his Sun newspaper column in May that he had been told by the BBC that if he made “one more offensive remark, anywhere at any time, (he) will be sacked.” 

Published in The Express Tribune, March  13^th,  2015.

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