The Stig

Are the BBC making too much of it?!

[Visit Thailand]

I am surprised to see how much coverage - internationally as well - the BBC is giving to The Stig controversy.

Does anyone who is not part of the BBC or in the UK actually care?

Top Gear is not as good as the BBC makes out anyway, but really I do not understand why they are giving so much international coverage to this.

I bet this Collins guy is laughing all the way to the bank as if it were not for the BBC, and their lame attempts to block the book, nobody would buy his it in the first place!

Ps. If you do not know who The Stig is - not to worry you really are not missing out on anything. Really.

[briggidere]

I think UK Top Gear is one of the best shows on TV at the minute. I don't care who the Stig is though.

If you think it's not as good as the BBC say it is, try watching the Australian version with their own Aussie presenters. It's a shocking piece of try hard and failing miserably. I do still watch it but there are a lot of moments where I cringe as they don't have their own personalities. They tried to get 3 people and say OK, you're Jeremy, you're James and you're Hammond thinking it would work. They use exactly the same format, studio layout etc, but it just doesn't cut it.

[kaled]

If the BBC did not make a fuss, the Stig character would be dead because any replacement would be outed quickly. As things stand, the case is far from over.

The Stig is effectively a fictional character and exploiting someone else's fictional character for money is not normally permitted. For instance, if I were to write a book, without permission, based on someone else's fictional character, I would expect a court case to ensue. Fan fiction does exist, but it doesn't usually involve money and in many cases may help a brand rather than harm it.

My guess is that this guy signed a standard confidentiality agreement. Instead, he should have been required to sign an agreement stating that all monies earned in relation to breaching confidentiality belonged to the BBC and copyright of any related books published belonged to the BBC. This is similar to the sort of agreement that engineers and designers typically sign.

Kaled.