Monday, February 7, 2011

Top Gear on the offensive again – now it's Albania's turn

Jeremy Clarkson and co-presenters using an episode filmed mostly in the country to 'joke' that it is a nest of mafia car thieve

  • The Guardian,
  • Article history
  • Top Gear presenters
    Albanian diplomats have shrugged off mafia comments made by the Top Gear team. Photograph: Julien Behal/PA

    After Mexico's ambassador's to the UK won a BBC apology for the characterisation of his country as "lazy and feckless" you might think Top Gear would go easy on the national stereotypes, at least for a week. Not a bit of it.

    True to form – and to the admittedly grudging BBC apology, which claimed such generalisations were a "playful" part of British humour – it was Albania's turn to receive the Top Gear treatment, with Jeremy Clarkson and co-presenters using an episode filmed mostly in the country to give extensive mileage to the "joke" that it is a nest of mafia car thieves.

    "Apparently, what happens is Albanians go to England, get a job, buy a car and then bring it back with them," Clarkson said in one segment of the programme, in which the three presenters had gone ostensibly to road-test cars for a mafia boss.

    "And it is quite traditional when you bring a car back like that, that you drive it around with the door locks pulled out and sometimes little marks along the back of the door," chimed Richard Hammond, amid clumsily mocked surprise that some of the imported cars might be stolen................more see:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/feb/07/top-gear-offensive-albania-mafia

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