In his latest Times column, Jeremy mentions that Top Gear will return in three weeks which works out to be June 22nd as we previously suspected. Yay!

After a 3 week break, Clarkson’s column is back. This latest one is about his trip to America and El Toro (presumably since he’s a consultant for “Gear”) and the Callaway Corvette C6 he drove while he was here.

Top Gear is screened all over the world, from remote Himalayan villages to the bullet-ridden boulevards of Lebanon. It is a genuine, bona fide export success. But in the US it is watched only by half a handful of expats who diligently follow BBC America, and a few torrentists on the interweb.

A great read as usual.

In Clarkson’s latest article for Top Gear Magazine, he discusses how racing is growing on him and his experiences at last year’s Britcar 24 endurance race that he participated in.

The last sentence of the article though is what’s really important:

Oh and just in case you think these are the ramblings of a senile old man who thinks he could have been Michael Schumacher if he’d been given the chance, consider this: James May aka, Captain Slow, agrees with every word. Next year, I suspect we may be back.

I hope so because last year’s episode was epic.

Yeah, this is 2-3 days old now, but I always forget to cross post stuff from the forums onto the front page. My apologies and here it is for those who missed it.

Back in November, two computer discs containing the personal details of 25 million UK residents went missing. Clarkson though was unconvinced that all of the hype over the ordeal was justified, so to prove a point, he published his personal banking account numbers in one of his recent newspaper columns.

Unsurprisingly, someone took those numbers and stole some money from his account by setting up a reoccurring donation of £500 a month to the British Diabetic Association, a legitimate charity.

Back in November, the Government lost two computer discs containing half the population’s bank details.

Everyone worked themselves into a right old lather about the mistake but I argued we should all calm down because the details in question are to be found on every cheque we hand out every day to every Tom, Dick and cash and carry.

To hammer the point home I even printed my own bank account number and sort code.

And guess what? I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account.

The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.

I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.

Oh Jeremy. Tsk tsk.

[Sources: The Daily Mail, BBC News, Telegraph]

Last last month, Jeremy was at the Xscape SnoZone (an indoor snow park) for his daughter’s birthday party. While he was outside smoking, a group of teenagers came up to him, started harassing him, and asking if he had any security with him.

I wasn’t even remotely bothered when the swarm of children first approached. I figured they were fans of Top Gear and wanted to know about Richard Hammond’s head. But no. What they wanted to know most of all was if I had any security.

I asked them politely to leave me alone. I walked away. I even walked away a bit more. But they kept coming. And so, figuring that attack was probably the best form of defence, I grabbed the ringleader by his hoodie, lifted him off the ground and explained, firmly, that it’d be best if he went back to his tenement.

You can read the full account in Clarkson’s latest Times column.

Ben Parkinson lost his legs in Afghanistan and watched tons of Top Gear during his recovery. Jeremy heard of him and setup a day for him to spend a day with the Top Gear team.

Ben saw his hero, test driver The Stig, pull some jaw-dropping stunts in a £350,000 Ascari A10 supercar and £160,000 Aston Martin DBS at BBC2’s Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey.

[Source: The Sun]

Clarkson’s new DVD titled “Supercar Showdown” is out today in the UK. You can order it and watch a preview video on Amazon.co.uk. For those of you outside the UK, word is that there’s a rip of it on Mininova somewhere.

Sorry for the late post, but it’s hard staying in the loop while not living in the UK.

Top Gear won a National Television Award Wednesday night for the second year in a row. Congratulations to the whole Top Gear crew and presenters! Well done!

Here’s a video (with really loud audio, be careful) of them winning:

EDIT:

Jeremy also won a “Special Recognition Award”, a lifetime achievement award kind of thing. Here’s some footage of that:

TopGear.com has some unseen footage of Jeremy driving in the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera on the Col de Torini cut from the first episode of this season. While the steaming video quality isn’t all that great, the soundtrack of the Gallardo’s exhaust is to die for.

For those of us who just can’t get enough of Top Gear and it’s presenters, Jeremy, Richard, and James all have released new books for the fall.

Richard’s autobiography, entitled “On the Edge“, was co-written with his wife Mindy. It details his 288 MPH crash last year and his recovery from the accident. There’s also a really funny video preview of the book by Richard at Amazon.co.uk.

Or you can just watch it via YouTube:

Jeremy’s book, “Don’t Stop Me Now“, contains his latest collection of columns as well as a ton of other random stuff.

Lastly, James May’s 20th Century accompanies his recent television series which covered various inventions and discoveries made over the past century.

[Via TopGear.com]