Jeremy Clarkson
Clarkson on: women
Back in August, Top Gear boss Andy Wilman and I went to Edinburgh to give a talk to a room full of television types on how Top Gear was still breaking viewing figure records in its 14th series.
Actually, it wasn't a talk because, truth be told, neither Andy nor I have the first idea why Big Brother and Wife Swap all wither, but Top Gear continues to solider on. So we decided to make it a question and answer session.
And here's how the questions went. Why is there no woman presenter? Why are there always pretty girls standing around at the front of the audience? Why is half the viewing audience women? Why are there so few female stars in the reasonably priced car? Were we ever asked by the BBC to have a female presenter? Is the Top Gear office a club for boys or are there girls in there too?
There were, in fact, so many questions about girls, that we ran out of time before anyone had a chance to ask us about the environment.
The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian. Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works. But here we have Top Gear setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them.
And as the session plodded on, it started to confuse me too. This meant my mind started to wander and pretty soon, I found myself wondering: "Why do we not have any women racing in Formula One?"
Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the differences. At work, girls are just people. It's the same story at parties and it's especially the same on the road.
The worst driver in the world is Top Gear's studio director. Put him on an airfield with one other car and he will hit it. I know. I've watched him do it. Put him in a car park with one pillar and he'll hit that too. He cannot park without kerbing the wheels and he cannot get into his own drive without crashing into his house. And he has a scrotum.
Vicki Butler-Henderson, on the other hand, does not have a scrotum. You know Vicki as the sometime presenter of Fifth Gear. I know her as a mate. And last month, I got to know her as a driver.
Jesus, she's good. I was in an Aston Martin DBS convertible. She was in a Ferrari California and we had most of Silverstone to play with. By rights, I should have kicked her arse. I had four more cylinders, a million more horsepowers and two more testicles. I didn't though. I couldn't even get close.
She could flick that big white Fezza into a corner and hold it in some of the most glorious tail slides while I lunged about in her rear-view mirror, sometimes going sideways, but as often as not going backwards across the grass, screaming.
Am I therefore suggesting that women make better drivers than men? No. I'm merely saying that there are men who drive like they have Tourette's of the epilepsy and women who drive like Gods. And vice versa. So again, I ask the question: "Why is Formula One more male than the lavatories at a Turkish steam room?"
“I once took a multi-tasking test set by the RAF. I was rubbish. All men are rubbish apparently. Only women can do it. So they would do well in F1”
It was not always so. Back in 1958 Maria Theresa De Filippis entered five races, qualified for three and finished the year with no points at all. Fifteen years later, girldom had another go when Lella Lombardi turned up on the scene. She entered 17 races, qualified for 12 and finished the year with half a point. And that was the last half a point won by anyone with breasts.
Perhaps the most famous entrant was Divina Galica, a British downhill skier who was given a break by the Hesketh team - famous for signing James Hunt. She was entered for three races, qualified for none and, it's said, caused a near mutiny among the team's mechanics who couldn't see the point of working round the clock to prepare a car for someone who was so off the pace you could take a picture of her on the hangar straight and it'd be pin sharp even if you were shooting at a quarter of a second.
The last girl to make it to F1 was Giovanna Amati in 1992. She was entered for three races, qualified for none and earned, in her short career, no points at all.
History, then, dictates that woman are not capable of racing an F1 car. But history is wrong. Women can fly airliners and they could fly fast fighter jets too, if they didn't have wombs, which tend to come off in high ‘g' turns. I'm not making that up.
What's more, women can multi-task. I was once told by Ross Brawn that on one occasion, during a race where rain was forecast, Michael Schumacher came on the radio - while setting a fastest lap - to say that the clouds at the back of the circuit looked threatening. He's racing a Ferrari and he has the time and inclination to do a spot of meteorology.
At other times, he would come on the radio mid-way through a race to ask for his jet to be made ready for an early getaway. Brawn reckoned this meant he could use very little of his brain to actually drive the car and a lot of it to win the race. It's why he was so good.
And it's why I'd be hopeless. I once took a multi-tasking test set by the RAF. In essence you have to play a simple version of space invaders while doing sums, answering questions, and remembering sequences of letters and numbers that flashed onto the screen from time to time. I was rubbish. All men are rubbish apparently. Only women can do it. Which means women would do well in F1.
And thanks to VB-H, we know that there are women who can drive. We know too that many are interested in cars. And that millions watch Formula One motor racing, not simply because they quite fancy Mark Webber.
Is it, then, that the cars require a physical strength that (most) women simply don't have?
I very much doubt it. Sadly, I am too tall,too fat and, these days, too broken to fit into a modern racer, but let's be honest shall we, it's not a rugby scrum in there is it? It's not basketball. It's not the discus. Yes it can be a bit hot and you need to have big neck muscles to cope with the cornering, but in essence you sit down, and turn the steering wheel which is power-assisted. How hard can it be?
Perhaps the problem then is that women don't have the hunter killer instinct that makes them want to pass the guy in front more desperately than they want their next breath. But do the guys? Well, judging by the pitiful overtaking display put on every other weekend, I'd suggest they have about as much desire to win as your average koala.
Whereas we only need look at Baroness Thatcher to know what women can be like when they want to get in front. Maybe that's the answer. The Maggon. She's small. She's got the killer instinct. She could be just what the sport needs.
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I think i must be one of the odd bods. I'm a girl and a real petrol head. I also used to race cars and i am an ARDS instructor as well teaching usually men how to drive supercars. Its true that some men are terrible drivers and some women are brilliant drivers. Somehow wish there were more of us about though!!
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....let's not forget about Danica Patrick, she's kicking butt and taking names!!!!!!
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more proof if proof were needed.. Jodie Kidd and Joanna Lumley. both were pretty phenomenally fast in the reasonably priced cars, and by all accounts Jodie is doing pretty well in very unreasonably priced ones too. Also, VB-H needs to be in more of your DVDs Jezza.
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I read an article a few years ago that dealt with differences betweens males and females and the two i remember the most were about physics and race cars. Apparently there are more male physicists i.e. Einstein, Kepler, Bell, Edison, Tesla, etc because men are born with their own internal physics experiment which is utilized from an early age, on a daily basis every time we pee. we we have to judge distance, force, arc, trajectory and such and it forms our minds for physics. The other difference is that women have some sort of inner need to protect their born and unborn children, that even if they are childless there is some sort of fear that won't allow them to push the envelope because an accident would cause an inability to care for their children or their children's children.
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..well there are no women in rugby union or premier football either or cricket or soumo and there aren't men in synchronised swimming or netball or in nurseries.. and while vick might be a god compared to a fallen angel she's a mere disciple compared to any messiah of motorsports we've had for the past..well since for ever really...Upon pondering why this is so could lead one to discover that the hen is merely the eggs reproductory vessel.. and that leaves the cock in a bit of a dilemma.. and with the reighns...:D
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and was fighting the bear for the berries or taming the wolf for the hunt the bigger challenge ? and who was the first human to climb the bare back of a horse ? was it a man or a woman ? You know as long as we're all having fun, trejectory or children's children( some say they're called grandkids or simply offspring..), it doesn't really matter. Mrs.Clarkson for PM !!!!!
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The French Michèle Mouton won four rallies in the World Rally Championship: 81 San Remo 82 Portugal 82 Greece (Acropolis) 82 Brazil
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maybeeeee they're not intrested in being told what to eat, wear, say, do by a little man's voice yelling over the intercom.. maybee it's more fun suckling on champagne dipped strawberries wearing fabric worth more by the gram than gold, sitting in the pits while men with half their waist size sweats his tiny little balls off cramped in a bucket mounted on a volcano to make it all possible..? Maybeeeee women have it figured out.. why join them when you can beat them ? Maybe women play to win and men just play ?? A point well made by the baroness !
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Ooooooh, I get it. VBH on TG any time soon?
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Experiments on multitasking have consistently returned two results: i) Humans can't consciously multitask. Autonomous processes can multitask, obviously, but it's strictly one conscious process at a time. Humans can switch rapidly between conscious processes, i.e. timeslicing, but can't truly multitask anything that isn't wholly autonomous. ii) There are no statistically significant differences between the timeslicing abilities of men and women, except for one experiment involving processing two audio sources simultaneously, in which the women tested averaged a bit better than the men tested. The belief is just a reflection of prevailing sexism - nowadays we're all socialised to assume without thought that women are superior to men.
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jeremy, wat the hell are u talking about?
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my sister used to race karts and she held the lap record around a track for 18 months until it was resurfaced. Boys did not like it
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Danica Patrick, anyone?
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I always felt that Ellen MacArthur could have been a highly successful racing driver - very competitive and lap record holder in the Suzuki Liana with a 1m 46.7. In the same car, Jodie Kidd, second fasted female and 11th fastest overall, took 1m 48 seconds.
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Notfatamerican has an interesting point. Although it would be a way bigger challenge for a woman to pee standing up. If I ever have a daughter I'll teach her that and then see if she is a good driver.
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Reminds me of Harry Enfield's "Women, Don't Drive!" sketch! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qdhbkTko4
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Thatcher in F1, that will certainly liven it up a lot! The reason there's no female F1 drivers is generally because there's little interest for girls to start racing; if there's less women at the bottom tiers of racing its almost impossible for any real talent to emerge.
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I think its a case of math, whether through nature or nurture it seems women are far less likely to be interested in cars, and therefore there are far fewer who start racing, and as top line drivers do need natural talent if you have fewer of them starting to race, the chances of one of them having real talent is pretty slim. Who knows maybe the best driver of all time could have been a woman who never even considered racing, so in the end we dont know.
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I also wonder what the number of men would be if the sport were to be organsied,run and dominated by women... why this isn't the case is rather more obvious than it might seem at first glance..: they simply can't be arsed :D As for what the sport needs.. choice of preferance i suppose... a J.stewart? Another schumacher ? A new senna ?? A modern day Graham Hill ? Perhaps to be more of an everyman ? The Maggon ? All of the above ???
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I'd rather not be sexist and biast and....cruel, but don't women generally spend half their life worrying about their face rather than what's coming towards them within 6 yards, do they not? I don't want to offend any women here, but the truth is women are better at things they enjoy, mind you, alot of people do, too...except without the make up or the weight or what have you.
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fuel1218.. Isn't that a bit like saying all men are swine ???
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anyway have a laugh and look up www.funtoosh.com/jokes/men_women/362 might help set your minds into perspective :D
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Ha jezza ur MAD ! Me i cant Leagally drive yet, but i Know how ! i know literally evrything on how to drive, women kick ass at driving....WELL....some ;) , and im one ! may not be legall yet but i can still KICK ASS !!!
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I have a dream , and in that dream V B-H , Sabine Schmitz ,and ? Kate Humble are presenting Top Gear - perhaps this could form the basis of some kind of 'challenge' - 'You must find and convince a female presenter to take over your role on the show' ?
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Open Car Bar
Uber-Moto commented on this article
02 November 2009
...Jezza, you're the man, MAN!!
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