Top Gear: TomTom SatNavs voiced by Jeremy Clarkson pulled

It’s been revealed that the deal for Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson to voice a TomTom SatNav has been shelved as it breaches BBC guidelines.

It seemed like a cracking plan for all concerned to get Jeremy Clarkson to add a voiceover for a TomTom SatNav, particularly with the Top Gear live show rapidly approaching and a million children starting to wonder what on earth they can get dad for Christmas.

But it looks like someone has dropped a big clanger as it’s been revealed that getting Jezza to attach his voice – and name – to a TomTom SatNav breaches the BBC’s editorial guidelines.

As a non-commercial organisation (although that’s extremely debatable when it comes to BBC Worldwide) the Beeb has to make sure it’s not seen to be promoting any particular products and, more importantly, that its on-air talent aren’t entering in to commercial agreements for products they are associated with.

Quite reasonably, BBC guidelines for employees/presenters say that:

“Those working on consumer programmes must take particular care not to endorse any product or service which could be covered in the programmes on which they work and they should have no commercial or other links which could appear to influence their BBC work”.

So the deal with TomTom for Jezza’s dulcet tones has been canned, but not before 54,000 TomToms with Clarkson’s badgering and sarcastic voiceover have been shipped. Which has left both the BBC and TomTom with a bit of a dilemma.

To save face all round, it’s been agreed that Jezza gets nothing for his voiceover role and that all profits from the 54,000 TomToms already shipped will be donated to BBC Children in Need, together with an extra donation from TomTom.

Which seems a pragmatic solution all round, although we can see there being a bit of a premium attached to the Clarkson TomToms that have escaped in to the wild.