Top Gear New Season Kill The Stig

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Top Gear presenters kill cardboard cut-out of The Stig in shooting
From: Daily Mail December 23, 2010 11:13AM 116 comments


TOP Gear's presenters have had their revenge on their former test driver, The Stig, in a symbolic killing.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May exacted their own devastating revenge on their former friend as the new series kicked off in typically controversial circumstances.

Earlier this year Ben Collins, aka The Stig, was hauled through the courts along with HarperCollins Publishers as the BBC tried to prevent the former Formula Three driver releasing his tell-all autobiography.

Despite spending almost $120,000 (£76,000) the BBC failed, the book was published and The Stig was sacked. Last night was the first episode to be screened since.


The presenters started with a session during which they attacked the former colleague's disloyalty and likened him to Judas Iscariot.

Then later during a during an epic cross-America car journey they undertook a challenge at a race track in Virginia where the trio were invited to practice a drive-by shooting.

'We'll choose the target, gentlemen, we'll choose it,' said show frontman Jeremy Clarkson. You just knew what was coming.

Life-size cardboard cut-outs of the Stig were lined up, with a points system set for hitting specific areas of The Stig's body - with top points for the testicles.

May was first in a Ferrari 458 Italia and said he was aiming for the "plums".

Hammond followed in a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, but approached the cut-out on foot first, turning it around and exclaiming, "So I can shoot him in the back. That's how it's done."

Clarkson responded: "So he'll just be having a normal day, thinking everything is going fine ..."

"Yeah, just seeing his mates," Hammond interjected, "doing something together and then he'll be shot in the back!"

Finally, Clarkson stepped up, scrapping the handgun used by the others and instead unloading with an automatic machine gun as he hung out of the window of a Mercedes SLS.

After collating their points, a triumphant Clarkson announced he had won with 245 points in the "ride test Stig-shooting drive-by competition".

The boys have made a habit of headline-grabbing stunts and the preview clips for the new series they played at the beginning of the episode proves they're not about to change.

Footage showed a car suspended several hundred metres above the ground beneath a helicopter, a monster truck making minced-meat of cars and buildings alike, an awkward run-in with Albanian police, desert racing, a helipad attached to the roof of a car and, most shockingly of all, a mock dumping of a corpse