guardian
Jeremy Clarkson and co-presenters using an episode filmed mostly in the country to 'joke' that it is a nest of mafia car thieves
The Guardian, Monday 7 February 2011
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.
Luckily for the BBC, it seems that Albanian diplomats take such slurs more phlegmatically than their Mexican counterparts.
While sources at the Albanian embassy admitted last night that the mafia stereotype could be a trying one, they noted that the ambassador himself had opted to accept the insults without complaint. His view was sought after two embassy staff attended the filming of the show's studio segments and one was understood to have become angry at the tone.
The previous show, which included Hammond's assertion that a Mexican car would be "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus", provoked a storm of protest. Comedian Steve Coogan weighed in with an Observer article calling Top Gear's humour lazy and its presenters "three rich, middle-aged men laughing at poor Mexicans".
While there was some outraged reaction to last night's show on Twitter, others claimed the programme had inspired them to visit Albania, a country whose scenic beauty Clarkson acknowledged – but only after drawing laughs from the studio audience with stories of how an Albanian government minister had been embarrassed after his car was found to be stolen at a Greek police checkpoint.
The BBC said it had no comment to make last night when contacted by the Guardian.
guardian.co.uk
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