British broadcaster the BBC has sacked Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of its hit auto-show “Top Gear.” The BBC is now looking to “renew” the program, which has an audience estimated at more than 350 million in 214 territories worldwide.
The move follows BBC exec Ken MacQuarrie’s investigation (see link here) into allegations that Clarkson hit the show’s producer Oisin Tymon while working on location on March 4.
In a statement, Tony Hall, the BBC director-general, said: “It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. It is not a decision I have taken lightly. I have done so only after a very careful consideration of the facts and after personally meeting both Jeremy and Oisin Tymon.”
Hall said Tymon had to go to hospital following “a physical altercation accompanied by sustained and prolonged verbal abuse of an extreme nature.”
Hall added: “For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.”
In a statement, Tymon’s lawyer, Paul Daniels, commented that the past month had been “a nightmare” for his client. “He now simply wishes to return to the job he loves at the BBC,” Daniels said.
Daniels added: “This is an important reminder that U.K. law protects all staff who face bullying, discrimination or violence at work, and all employers are required to protect their staff from such behavior.”
Hall is now looking to the future of the show, without Clarkson, and possibly without co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond, whose contracts end this month. Hall has given the task of reinventing the show to Kim Shillinglaw, the chief of “Top Gear’s” U.K. channel, BBC2.
