The Stig Revealed, But He Must Be Mad

It’s been breaking news across the UK over the past couple of hours, but in case you missed it (or want to know why I think he’s mad) the iconic face of BBC’s Top Gear has been revealed as… Ben Collins.

The Stig's identity has been revealed

It’s been rumoured for a while that Collins is indeed The Stig, but now that it’s official it’s not really all that interesting.  The man is a former Formula 3 driver as well as taking part in Le Mans and IndyCar, which means unless you’re a fan of those particular racing disciplines you’ve probably never heard of him, so for him to be revealed as such a well-known character watched by millions of casual car fans isn’t exciting in the slightest.  In fact when the rumours started coming in thick and fast once the ‘white’ Stig had replaced the ‘black’ stig people were speculating big names from Damon Hill to Michael Schumacher, in fact the Top Gear producers even went as fas as to jokingly reveal Schumacher as the mystery driver.  But alas, any hope of The Stig being revealed as a big name in the world of motorsport or keeping the mystery alive for a while longer has been totally spoiled by a very selfish and greedy man.

Top Gear – 7 episodes of meh

The Top Gear team were back on our screens... briefly

Since the rebirth of the Top Gear series in 2002 Sunday nights just haven’t been quite right without eagerly anticipating the 8 o’clock weekly show.  I, along with however many millions of other fans were no doubt excited leading up to the start of the 13th series beginning on June 21st, but then the announcement came that there would only be seven episodes.  That along with various budget cuts to the show (why they can’t cut back on the daytime bollocks middle aged women watch I’ll never know) meant Top Gear would have an uphill struggle to entertain before filming even began, but nonetheless us fans were excited and sat in hope that they’d simply cram everything they could into each one hour of awesomeness that had been bestowed upon us every Sunday night… for a few weeks of the year at least.

What we ultimately got was seven episodes of absolute meh.  The series did start off quite well with a typically dramatised race between a steam locomotive, a classic motorcycle and a classic car from one end of the country to the other in 1940’s style, no doubt James May got there hours before the other two instead of minutes before as was insinuated on the show but none the less it made for entertaining television which is more or less what the show is entirely about.  A media frenzy had also been whipped up to due a rumour that The Stig was to be revealed as Michael Schumacher at the very end of the episode, and that’s exactly what happened.  For a while it did seem legitimate, however after a comically failed lap by the man himself we were once again left to ponder exactly who The Stig really is.  Good thing too, popular rumour is that he’s some ex-Formula 3 test driver or something equally as dull, there would be no point whatsoever in revealing that.

After a solid first show the budget cuts seemed very evident for what was left of the series.  The remaining six shows primarily consisted of a series of drag races between various vehicles, spending small amounts of money on either ‘classic’ cars or modern small cars and at one stage a rather stupid race between James May/Richard Hammond in a car vs the legendary Royal Mail system, once again going from one end of the country to the other in an attempt to reach a house somewhere in the north east of Scotland.  We were treated to basically nothing happening apart from the letter inevitably arriving first, but interestingly the was no mention of how long the letter had been there before May and Hammond had shown up.  Again it was probably several hours rather than the close race they made it out to be.