Top Gear/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• I thought for a while that the upcoming American version of Top Gear to be aired on the History Channel was an example of Network Decay... until I realized that the History Channel probably doesn't air many automotive ads. The brilliance of the original version of Top Gear is that, since it airs on The BBC, they can't advertise anything, freeing the hosts to give their honest opinions about cars as opposed to making the show a glorified infomercial. Airing the American version on a network that doesn't rely on advertising revenue from automotive manufacturers would help preserve that impartiality. Time will tell if the show is any good, though, but that's a reason to hope for the best. --Ferrarimanf 355
  • You haven't seen the latest season of Ice Road Truckers, have you?
• James May admits he probably has some kind OCD that you could set your watch to, and he admits being terribly afraid of heights... the only reason he has been able to fly to the edge of space, pilot a blimp-caravan, and knows how to fly an aeroplane is because he's so busy checking his instrument panel that he's forgotten he's flying.
• Outtakes from the Porsche Panamera race show Hammond and May repeatedly headbutting the camera light, which is has always been mounted on the top passenger-side corner of windscreen in every car they've ever filmed. They were even made fun of extensively during the Top Gear Awards the next series for this. But when you think about it, how often do any of the presenters actually sit in the passenger seat?
• The "Stig Farm" sketch after the departure of the Ben Collins Stig makes a lot more sense when you remember that Clarkson enjoyed Harry & Paul's "Clarkson Island" sketch, which similarly had Clarkson clones raised on a farm and some of them turning out to be defective.

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