Top Gear G&T

The BBC Trust has wagged a bony finger at Top Gear's polar special for allegedly "glamourising" drink driving by showing a scene of Jeremy Clarkson sipping a gin and tonic while motoring across the arctic wastes to the North Pole. Leaving aside the bizarre notion that Mr. Clarkson could glamourise anything, the producers quite rightly put forward the defence that the North Pole is outside of British jurisdiction and therefore no offence was committed.

Now if they'd had the presence to also point out that since the programme aired there have been remarkably few incidents of drunken British young people tearing around the Pole in SUVs, its impact may be emperically regarded as minimal.

I can't, however, say the same for the scene in another episode where they showed of James May driving an Aston Martin in Italy stark naked because his car was a racer and therefore didn't have air conditioning and couldn't open the windows. It's of such things that eye bleach is made for.

Update: James May responds– and not to the nude Aston Martin bit.

Cooling His Heels

A British yachtsman is circumnavigating the Arctic sea to draw attention to the rapidly disappearing ice cap that has left the arctic looking like a somewhat cooler version of the Mediterranean.

Unfortunately, the ice cap has not only failed to vanish, but it's heavier than usual this year. So far, the only attention he's drawn has been from the Russians, whose nuclear-powered icebreakers he needs to ferry his boat through the impenetrable ice (if they can even manage it themselves!), and of the polar bears, who are a tad more numerous than he thought and regard his skylark as a crunchy treat with a chewy centre.

Moral: Never believe the hype; it makes for poor advance planning.