On Wednesday, 4th March 2015, the Top Gear host and TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson punched the producer of the show in the mouth full whack because he was offered soup and a cold meat platter at the end of filming instead of steak. The reason being the hotel chef had gone home. Following punching the producer, who was called Owen Tymon, in the mouth, Clarkson called him a lazy Irish Cnut and said he would see to it Tymon was finished and would never work in Television ever again. After this Tymon had to be admitted to A and E for treatment of his injuries.
It was later announced through the BBC's website that the network would be likely to drop the remaining two episodes of the series as well in the wake of the incident.
A Change.org petition, aiming to reverse the BBC decision, was started on 10th March. The petition reached its target 1,000,000 signatures by the afternoon of 20th March, and was delivered to the BBC in an artillery vehicle by a man dressed as Top Gear test driver The Stig. The hosting website described the petition as the fastest-growing campaign in its history. There were protests outside the then Head of the BBC's house, Tony Hall, and both Hall and Tymon received death threats from enraged Clarkson supporters.
Now for me right is right and what is wrong is nobody's right. Clarkson was guilty of behaving like a spoilt child and showed himself that day to be a violent thug. The BBC had no other choice than to sack him. Put it like this, if you or I punched somebody in the face at work for not making a hot meal, or if you or I did it and subjected them to a rant, we would be sacked on the spot, and likely arrested and escorted from the premises and charged with ABH.
So-called rational, "normal" members of the public were protesting over the sacking of somebody who carried out an act of ABH and defending him to the hilt. I heard somebody say about Clarkson when told he would be sacked on the spot if he behaved like that "Yes but that's different". What? What sort of f*cking logic is that? So if you are a multi-millionaire TV presenter it is acceptable to act like a spoilt child and turn violent, but it isn't if you are Joe Public? And this is rational, normal behaviour and values? Well if it is I'm pleased to be odd.
In November 2015, Tymon sued Clarkson and the BBC for racial discrimination over the verbal abuse he received in the March incident. The following February, Clarkson formally apologised to Tymon and settled the racial discrimination and personal injury claim for £100,000.
If I had my way Clarkson's career would have been ended there and then. If you remember six years before, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were (Rightly) slaughtered by the Daily Mail, for the embarrassingly unfunny phone call to Andrew Sachs. I read the transcript of it six times, and listened to the phone call on You Tube four times, and I didn't crack a smile once. It wasn't my definition or idea of humour. Enraged Mail listeners and the likes of Richard Littlejohn complained about it. When the broadcast first went out, on Saturday, 18th October 2008, two people complained. Then a week later the Mail got hold of it and 30k phoned in protesting and angrily castigating Ross and Brand. I severely doubt most of them would have heard or listened to it.
So going by the logic of so-called rational, "normal" people, it is acceptable to punch somebody in the mouth, subject them to an angry rant, but not to phone a 78 year old guy up to say you have slept with his Grand-daughter. Richard Littlejohn strongly backed Clarkson to the hilt, as did Daily Mail readers. What sort of logic or rationale is THAT?
On Monday, 4th July 2005 the Jeremy Kyle show started on ITV. Within weeks of it being aired, I watched it to see what the fuss and furore was about and I saw straight away it was what it was. A bear baiting TV show based on the format of Jerry Springer. Not that there is anything new or different in this. There was bread and circuses in the Roman times. They used to pay to laugh at and poke fun at the mentally ill in Bedlam in the 18th Century on Sundays and people used to queue to look at PT Barnum's freakshows in the 19th Century. People turned up at a public hanging to watch in the 18th and 19th Centuries, they watched bear fighting or it is like when kids at school watch when there's a fight, or people stand and watch when there's been a car crash.
The only surprise was that it took 14 years before a member of the show committed suicide. The show was just a disaster waiting to happen. It was a ticking timebomb. In September 2007, Manchester judge Alan Berg described the show as "trash" which existed to "titillate bored members of the public with nothing better to do".
The inevitable finally happened in May 2019. On Thursday, 9th May, Hampshire Police found a man dead at an address in Portsmouth. He was confirmed to be 63-year-old Steve Dymond who had been a guest on an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show that had been filmed a week before his death and had not yet been aired. He took part in the show's polygraph test, which determined he was being unfaithful to his partner after he had initially denied doing so. During the episode Kyle had accused Dymond of being a "serial liar" and made other disparaging comments and allegations about Dymond. Six days later the show was axed.
On 18th June 2019, it was announced that Kyle declined to appear before MPs investigating reality television, although senior executives (including McCall and Stanier) had appeared.
The Jeremy Kyle Show was cheap and easy to make. Some guests were vulnerable and mentally ill or had addiction problems. That's obvious listening to and looking at them. They shouldn't be paraded in front of the entire nation to be jeered at and have Jeremy Kyle, who is an ex public school, a former insurance salesman and a radio shock jock, screaming abuse and insults in their faces. Kyle isn't a counselor or therapist or psychiatrist. He's not qualified to do the job. Get somebody who is qualified in that sphere to deal with and talk to them. All they needed was a few chairs, camera’s and bouncers. They employed a pseudo psychologist to pretend they cared and a gobshite of a presenter. They then just found the lowest common denominator and away they went! It was about cheap and nasty TV. It wasn’t about caring for those oft vulnerable or ill individuals it was about TV ratings! It refused to allow reasoned discussion and debate. It never considered why or how somebody ended up like that in the first place. It was just "You are here. You are scum. That's it". It also spawned the angry, aggressive, abusive, I'm right you are wrong, shut up, you don't know what you are talking about culture we see today on social media and in the MSM.
Despite the fact that a mentally ill guy had been driven to suicide, 600k signed a petition demanding its reintroduction. Within two weeks. So doesn't the life of Steve Dymond count for anything? Is his life so worthless so they can get their daily fix of Kyle screaming more abuse in the face of a mentally ill person? Do they want another suicide? Many were using whataboutery saying that Love Island hadn't been axed so why Kyle and saying people knew what they were getting into when they went on there. Well yes, I had no time for the show, many of the people on it, the format or Kyle himself and the tragedy is it was even on in the first place. 600k so-called normal, rational people wanted this back on. And I am odd?
Even though these events occurred over ten years ago, they still illustrate the irrationality of so-called rational thinking people. Aspies and Autistics are supposed to oddballs, but when you get supposedly sane people....
* Phoning TV channels up in tears over the jailing of a fictitious character on a TV soap.
* Hitting actors over the head with handbags because they can't tell the difference between his role and a role he played as an actor.
* Sending death threats and razor blades to the actor whose character who got the very same fictitious character jailed.
* Sending death threats to, and burning effigies of, a person who has been harshly sent off in a World Cup soccer match.
* Not being able to tell the difference between an actor and the character the actor plays.
* Protesting over the sacking of a violent TV presenter and sending death threats to the guy he sent to A and E.
* Protesting over the axing of a bear baiting TV show where a mentally ill guy committed suicide.
Then you have to wonder who is sane and who isn't? Yes, I am very grateful to have AS, when NT's are acting like this.... When Kyle and Clarkson sign petitions for the masses who lose their jobs, then the masses should sign them for them.
