Top Gear upsets Belfast

Top Gear has been condemned by politicians for its extravagant stunts whilst filming a piece for the next series in Northern Ireland.

We ran a report a week or two ago about the Top Gear boys filming a piece for the next series in the Carpathian Mountains. The locals loved it. We had loads of hits from Romania and lots of emails. And the press in Romania loved the fact that Top Gear were making their beautiful part of the world more know to its viewers.

Which with a show as popular as Top Gear – and popular all over the world, no less – that seems a pretty sensible reaction. But it would seem it’s not a universal reaction. Oh, no. Ask the idiot politicians in Belfast what they think of TG filming an episode in Belfast and you’ll get a completely different reaction.

Gregory Campbell – a former Stormont Culture Minister (he’s obviously got his finger on the pulse of popular culture then) – is demanding that the BBC divulge ‘how much the weeks filming in N. Ireland is costing BBC licence payers…once that is revealed people would be able to make a judgement on whether they thought it was worthwhile’. What an Egit! And – surprise, surprise – a twonk from FoE waded in with ‘The wanton destruction of tens of thousands of pounds worth of machinery impresses no-one. It’s a wasteful extravagance and, in the middle of a global recession, in very poor taste’.

For starters, Mr Campbell, have you bothered to look at what Top Gear makes the BBC? Probably not. It is one of the most successful BBC exports, netting the Beeb big sums of money. Why? Because it’s good at what it does. And making good programmes costs money. But then, as with most politicians, you have no idea how the real world works

As for the Friends of the Earth bod, it’s what you’d expect from a doom-mongering Luddite who wants us all to live on root vegetables and walk everywhere. And in the midst of the doom and gloom a programme that not only makes a profit but makes us smile is worth ever penny invested in it.

And if you’re wondering what’s got these two so worked up, the TG stunts included firing a Twingo in to the sea; hoisting cars to the top of Harland and Wolff’s famous twin cranes and a bit of drag racing. Sounds like pretty standard TG fare to me.

So if I were the TG producers I’d just take my business elsewhere in the future. The world’s full of great places to film. Why bother with nit-picking politicians out for a bit of cheap personal PR? You get enough of that on the mainland.

No wonder the BBC doesn’t film much in N. Ireland.

Source: Quotes – Belfast Telegraph