'Uber-conservatives' aren't cool

Steve Coogan has attacked the humour of Top Gear, calling the presenters ‘three rich, middle-aged men laughing at poor Mexicans’.

In a no-holds-barred attack in today’s Observer, he said ‘far from being shocking, [the show’s attitude] is just shockingly dull.

‘The Lads have this strange notion that if they are being offensive it bestows on them a kind of anti-establishment aura of coolness,’ he wrote. ‘In fact, like their leather jackets and jeans, it is uber-conservative (which isn't cool).

Addressing the trip directly he said: ‘Increasingly, you each look like a middle-aged punk rocker pogoing at his niece's wedding. That would be funny if you weren't regarded by some people as role models. Big viewing figures don't give you impunity – they carry responsibility. Start showing some.’

The show prompted a complaints from the Mexican ambassador last week when Hammond said that ‘Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus’.

And student Iris de la Torre, a Mexican woman living in London, is taking legal action against the BBC under a new equality law. Her lawyers have demanded the hit BBC2 motoring show is taken off the air and that there is a formal investigation into the incident.

However, in his column in The Sun yesterday, a defiant Clarkson wrote: ‘There are calls in Britain at the moment for all offensive humour to be banned. But what people don't realise is that without offence, there can be no jokes.’

Car enthusiast Coogan says he is a ‘huge fan’ of Top Gear who ‘normally regard[s] the presenters' brand of irreverence as a part of the rough and tumble that goes with having a sense of humour.’

Although the BBC said sorry if any offence was caused, Coogan took issue the wording of the apology, which said mockng national stereotypes was a trait of British humour.

‘The Beeb's hand-wringing suggested tolerance of casual racism, arguably the most sinister kind. It's easy to spot the ones with the burning crosses,’ he wrote.

‘Besides, there is not a shred of truth in Top Gear's "comic" stereotype. I can tell you from my own experience, living in the US, Mexicans work themselves to the bone doing all the dirty thankless jobs that the white middle-class natives won't do.’

‘What makes it worse is that the Lads wear this offensive behaviour as a badge of pride, pleased that they have annoyed those whom they regard, in another lazy stereotype, as sandal-wearing vegans with beards and no sense of humour.’

He added: ‘I know something about comedy. It's true there are no hard fast rules; it's often down to judgment calls. It's safe to say, though, that you can get away with saying unsayable things if it's done with some sense of culpability.’

He said all the comedians he worked with and respects ‘could all defend and justify their comedy from a moral standpoint. They are laughing at hypocrisy, human frailty, narrow-mindedness. They mock pomposity and arrogance’.

He branded Richard Hammond as a ‘tragic’ figure who ‘reminds you of the squirt at school as he hangs round Clarkson the bully.... Meanwhile, James May stands at the back holding their coats as they beat up the boy with the stutter’.

Stewart Lee has previously berated Hammond’s attitude in an extended stand-up routine.

Published: 6 Feb 2011