Post by Teddy Bear on Sept 2, 2010 17:22:35 GMT
I've been seeing snippets of this story for a little while now, and wasn't planning on doing anything with it. I personally have no interest in Top Gear, or anything or anybody that goes with it, but can understand that it appeals to others.
But when I heard that the BBC had spent somewhere in the region of £100,000, that's about the contributions of 700 licence fee payers, to try and prevent the identity of this individual being revealed, I felt I had to post it here. That's when I came across this article below, and felt I should share it with you too.
Consider too the only comment that has been received to this article so far, to understand just who Top Gear and the 'Stigs'
identity is important to.
Here's the comment, you can judge for yourselves
But when I heard that the BBC had spent somewhere in the region of £100,000, that's about the contributions of 700 licence fee payers, to try and prevent the identity of this individual being revealed, I felt I had to post it here. That's when I came across this article below, and felt I should share it with you too.
Consider too the only comment that has been received to this article so far, to understand just who Top Gear and the 'Stigs'
identity is important to.Here's the comment, you can judge for yourselves
From this you can tell you are one of the eco freacks who hate topgear, the stig is like a brand you wouldnt stand it if your companys secrets where leaked, although we dont mind knowing who he is it keeps an element of guessing for the fans of top gear and to ruin this for the sake off a book is petty on his behalf and asure you 99% of peple who watch top gear are not to get a largh off jerramy, most blokes do talk about the cars all the time
- luke griffiths, birmingham, 02/9/2010 15:28
Psst - we know who The Stig is - but we don't care
By Richard O'hagan
Last updated at 3:40 PM on 2nd September 2010
So, we are all allowed to know the identity of The Stig. Forgive me if I don't get excited.
In fact, forgive me if, instead, I point out that this is yet another example of the BBC wasting licence fee payers’ money because they don't know their own product, they don't know their own audience and they don't understand the world that we live in.
Yes, it must be frustrating for the Beeb to have spent a lot of money building up the Stig character as a man of mystery, only to have him out himself for a second time. However, to say that the anonymity of the driver behind the character was integral to the Top Gear show was so ludicrous that no judge was ever going to buy it.
What the BBC seem to have forgotten is that Top Gear is watched by somewhere in the region of 8 million people. Of those, I would say roughly 7.9m are casual viewers who watch it for the comedy, the silly challenges and the chance to be annoyed by Jeremy Clarkson.
The number of viewers who buy the fiction that The Stig is some kind of mechanoid or space alien is approximately nil. That leaves a huge number of people who neither know, nor care who is inside the white suit.
We all know that it isn't Nigel Mansell, because he is too busy playing golf. We all know it isn't Damon Hill, because he is too busy running race tracks. And we all know it isn't – except on one edition – Michael Schumacher, because he is too busy destroying his own reputation by returning to Formula One.
By the same token, though, few of us are big enough petrolheads to know or care who the person playing The Stig actually is. Even if you told us, we wouldn't know him if he ran us over.
Therein lies the BBC's problem. An anonymous character can be played by anyone. Writing a book stating that you currently play the role is, I would say, a particularly dumb and career-limiting move. In suggesting that the author of the book was in any way integral to the mystique of the role, the BBC got it spectacularly rear end about face, and so spent a load of our money pursuing a hopeless case – money which could have been better spent finding and promoting a new Stig.
The really silly thing about all of this is that it is not as if anything is a secret any more. If you want to know who The Stig is, just type it into Google and you will find the answer. You don't even have to leave the information there, the wonders of Twitter and Facebook will disseminate it in the blink of an eye – just ask Kevin Pietersen.
And if you want to know how out of touch the BBC can be, listen back to Richard Bacon's Radio Five Live show. There, you will find in the space of ten comic minutes James May trying desperately to maintain the fiction that no-one knows who The Stig is - a classic case of shutting the stable door after the Ferrari Prancing Horse has bolted.
Separate from all this – but entirely related – we have Richard Madeley pointing out the folly of the BBC moving its flagship programmes to Manchester, fully a decade after he moved his to London because of the difficulty in getting guests to travel to the North East.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the BBC. It hasn't kept up with the times and it has allowed beancounters to dictate its wider policies.
It has completely lost sight of what matters to the rest of us – and it isn't the identity of a man in a white crash helmet.
By Richard O'hagan
Last updated at 3:40 PM on 2nd September 2010
So, we are all allowed to know the identity of The Stig. Forgive me if I don't get excited.
In fact, forgive me if, instead, I point out that this is yet another example of the BBC wasting licence fee payers’ money because they don't know their own product, they don't know their own audience and they don't understand the world that we live in.
Yes, it must be frustrating for the Beeb to have spent a lot of money building up the Stig character as a man of mystery, only to have him out himself for a second time. However, to say that the anonymity of the driver behind the character was integral to the Top Gear show was so ludicrous that no judge was ever going to buy it.
What the BBC seem to have forgotten is that Top Gear is watched by somewhere in the region of 8 million people. Of those, I would say roughly 7.9m are casual viewers who watch it for the comedy, the silly challenges and the chance to be annoyed by Jeremy Clarkson.
The number of viewers who buy the fiction that The Stig is some kind of mechanoid or space alien is approximately nil. That leaves a huge number of people who neither know, nor care who is inside the white suit.
We all know that it isn't Nigel Mansell, because he is too busy playing golf. We all know it isn't Damon Hill, because he is too busy running race tracks. And we all know it isn't – except on one edition – Michael Schumacher, because he is too busy destroying his own reputation by returning to Formula One.
By the same token, though, few of us are big enough petrolheads to know or care who the person playing The Stig actually is. Even if you told us, we wouldn't know him if he ran us over.
Therein lies the BBC's problem. An anonymous character can be played by anyone. Writing a book stating that you currently play the role is, I would say, a particularly dumb and career-limiting move. In suggesting that the author of the book was in any way integral to the mystique of the role, the BBC got it spectacularly rear end about face, and so spent a load of our money pursuing a hopeless case – money which could have been better spent finding and promoting a new Stig.
The really silly thing about all of this is that it is not as if anything is a secret any more. If you want to know who The Stig is, just type it into Google and you will find the answer. You don't even have to leave the information there, the wonders of Twitter and Facebook will disseminate it in the blink of an eye – just ask Kevin Pietersen.
And if you want to know how out of touch the BBC can be, listen back to Richard Bacon's Radio Five Live show. There, you will find in the space of ten comic minutes James May trying desperately to maintain the fiction that no-one knows who The Stig is - a classic case of shutting the stable door after the Ferrari Prancing Horse has bolted.
Separate from all this – but entirely related – we have Richard Madeley pointing out the folly of the BBC moving its flagship programmes to Manchester, fully a decade after he moved his to London because of the difficulty in getting guests to travel to the North East.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the BBC. It hasn't kept up with the times and it has allowed beancounters to dictate its wider policies.
It has completely lost sight of what matters to the rest of us – and it isn't the identity of a man in a white crash helmet.