"Carbon fibre up my arse!"

There has been a time in your life when you have put Top Gear on. For me, I’ve put it on regularly for the past 9 or so years. I’ve even enjoyed it, heck! I’ve even been disappointed after finding out the snooker has replaced it. Though over the last year or so, I’ve started to become quite ashamed of liking Top Gear.

What I forget about Top Gear is that it’s a show about cars, and I don’t really like cars, I’m not against them, but I’m not the sort to go “oooo look at those valves, if this car was a chick, I’d fuck it” or “carbon fibre up my arse!”. The format of Top Gear shouldn’t appeal to me or most of its viewers, as a nation we are not all inclined to go on “cruises” or become aroused at the sight of exhausts, but many of us tune in to Top Gear, and why? Because it’s entertaining.

Some of it’s entertaining that is. Not the stuff about cars, that’s pretty boring, but the entertainment comes from the banter of the presenters, Jeremy “no relation” Clarkson, Richard “the hamster” Hammond, and James “?” May and their exploits in the challenges. Yeah, we love the challenges don’t we? They can be genuinely funny at times, such as the road trip across America, but after 9 years they appear to have run out of ideas, and we’re left with juvenile films of three middle aged men destroying caravans or being casually racist.

That’s not ok right? Being racist? Even if it is “casual”? Sure, Top Gear has never made statements such as “kill the Jews” but it did get in trouble for making some comments about Mexicans. They were only joking was the defence, and of course some people get offended really easily, but whether or not the presenters truly believe in their comments, there are viewers who do, who adopt these opinions with a ferocious fervour, and these ignorant pricks should not be encouraged.

What’s perhaps more worrying for some is the ever increasing hints of homophobia of the show. Like racism, homophobia seems like a perfectly normal thing for older generations, and while they may mean no malice, calling another man gay because he does something different from the supposed heterosexual norm is somewhat close minded and archaic. It’s not like Clarkson is shouting “down with gays!”, far from it, but by including homosexuality in their banter, it suggests that they believe it to be inferior to heterosexuality.

Forgetting about the racism and homosexuality, Top Gear is stagnating. Already in its second series of the year, it’s on TV too much (even if you don’t watch Dave) to maintain its creativity. There is such thing as “too much of a good thing” and it looks as if Top Gear is suffering greatly for its over exposure. It needs a rest before it gets any more complaints and we all get sick of it. At the moment it’s like looking into a mirror, and what we’re seeing is a nation of casual racists and homophobes. We all abuse the French and the Welsh from time to time and call our best mates gay, but maybe, just maybe, that’s not a good thing, and Top Gear shouldn’t be encouraging it. "Shut up you gay".