Britain's most "incorrect" man off the hook
Jeremy Clarkson is a British motoring writer who also has a TV show. He is enormously popular for his "incorrect" but jocular comments and those who tune into his show know very well the sort of humorous exaggerations they are likely to hear. Note: "Lorry" is the British word for a truck.
"Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, is set to dismiss complaints about a joke by Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter of BBC's Top Gear, about lorry drivers killing prostitutes, The Times has learnt.
[Clarkson] said: "This is a hard job and I'm not just saying that to win favour with lorry drivers, it's a hard job. "Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day."
Notorious prostitute killers Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and Steve Wright, also known as the Suffolk Strangler, were both lorry drivers. This morning the BBC said it had received 517 complaints about the joke, with Ofcom also confirming that it had received calls about the show. But it is understood that the industry regulator, which is thought to have received only a handful of complaints, is likely to rule that the comments did not fall foul of the broadcasting code.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "The vast majority of Top Gear viewers have clear expectations of Jeremy Clarkson's long-established and frequently provocative on-screen persona. "This particular reference was used to comically exaggerate and make ridiculous an unfair urban myth about the world of lorry driving, and was not intended to cause offence."
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7 comments:
Wow. I am totally disallusioned now. Even truck drivers have turned into wussies!
In Britain, everybody's a pansy!
The Brits and the Irish are particularly sensitive and love to complain about every and anything they think is offensive.
Recently an Irish comedian came under fire for making comments about "knackers" on the Late, late show on RTE-1.
Everyone's a critic and a political correctness expert.
They should get a life. But that's difficult for busy-bodies who have nothing better to do than peek out from behind lace curtains and put their values on others.
"Knackers"?
So (anon #2)- in that case you could also say that in America everybody's rude, arrogant and self-obsessed!
I'm with anon #3. What the hell is knackers? Being American I understand "knockers". Never heard of a knacker before.
So why not just look up the word - according to Wikipedia, one of the many meanings is that in Ireland it's a "bad" word referring to rural people or "travelers".
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