Fair enough to call us racist says James May as Sir Trevor Phillips praises Top Gear's 'brilliant talents'

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12 April 2012

Top Gear's James May thinks it's "fair enough" that the BBC2 show's presenters have been branded "casual racists".

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and May, who sparked a diplomatic row by labelling Mexicans "feckless" and "lazy" on last week's show, have also been criticised by Steve Coogan.

But at the Chortle comedy website's awards in Soho last night, May said Coogan was his favourite comic and added: "Intelligent criticism from intelligent people who are masters of their craft should be taken seriously, and I welcome it."

He said his team "hadn't the energy" to deliberately cause a scandal.

Today equality chief Sir Trevor Phillips dismissed the Top Gear slur as a "bit of schoolboy provocation".

The Equality and Human Rights Commission chairman went on to say Clarkson, May and Hammond were "brilliant talents" as he reacted to anger over the hosts' comments Mexicans.

Sir Trevor refused to condemn the show's presenters as he said "getting into a ruck with Clarkson" would only add to the programme's carefully sculpted notoriety.

Delivering a speech on equality in Westminster, Sir Trevor said the commission did not need to take action.

"They have created a set of on-screen cartoon characters which from my brief experience of meeting Clarkson are nothing like the real people," he said.

"But they do the job they're supposed to do - get millions of people to watch a bunch of middle-aged blokes mucking about with cars."

The Mexican ambassador complained to the BBC about "outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults" made on the show after Hammond joked that Mexican cars reflected national characteristics, saying they were "just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent".

May described Mexican food as "like sick with cheese on it" and Clarkson predicted they would not get any complaints about the show because "at the Mexican embassy, the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control like this (snores). They won't complain, it's fine".

But Sir Trevor added: "Getting into a ruck with Clarkson over what he says about one group of people or another won't change anyone's mind or tackle prejudice."

Sir Trevor praised Sky Sports for its conduct during the Andy Gray and Richard Keys sexism row.

He said the incident illustrated why employers or organisations did not need heavy-handed political or bureaucratic interventions to show them they had made a mistake.

"A good example is the Sky Sports affair, where James Murdoch and his executives didn't hesitate to show Andy Gray and Richard Keys the red card," he said.

"Good for them. Neither we nor Ofcom had to issue angry denunciations, or ring anyone up and threaten some kind of legal action.

"Sky's bosses know their business - that's why they're massively successful. And here they instinctively knew what they needed to do. More importantly, they also knew what Sky's ten million subscribers would want them to do."

Getting involved in every bit of provocation through the media undermines the commission's work, he added.

"Both the Top Gear Tendency, which bangs on about obnoxious feminists, and the PC lobby which wants the commission to be a strident, boot-faced, politically correct thought police are now just hanging on at the fringes of public life," he said. "They are all, like the dinosaurs, on their way out.

"Britain has moved on. So we too have to move on, adopting an approach which learns from the past but is designed for the future."

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