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tazzieman

By tazzieman
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Russ Ferry's Protegé

Russ

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I'm guessing May in the Esprit, Hammond in the Mustang and Clarkson in the 928, will be interesting to see but I really wish they'd try and make it more of a car show again rather than useless destruction of cars under the guise of entertainment

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firstone Ferry's Protegé

firstone

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Perhaps all those in our home are cynical.

None of us believe it was unintentional.

That's a risk you take when you're always trying to be a smart arse.

Still, better not to hate fool's, you'd be too busy to smile n love life.

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tazzieman Ferry's Protegé

tazzieman

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A Top Gear film shoot in the wilds of Argentina ended in a dramatic escape. Jeremy Clarkson reveals how he hid under a bed from an armed mob baying for his blood

It all started to go wrong while we were filming on a mountain in the world’s southernmost ski resort, just outside the city of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego.

We knew Ushuaia was the port from which the General Belgrano had sailed on its doomed voyage at the start of the Falklands War and we knew that anti-British feelings still run hard and deep, here at the bottom of the world.

As a result we were on our best behaviour. We were posing for all photographs, and happily accepting requests for autographs. The sun was out. All was calm. We were even referring to the slopes as “gradients” Certainly there was no suggestion that we had walked into the middle of a war we thought had ended 32 years ago. But then came word from the bottom of the mountain. Some protesters had arrived and were keen to let everyone know they were unhappy with our visit. Our producers tried to explain that we were there to film at the ski resort and then to host a game of car football in the city. England v Argentina. The Bottom of the World Cup we were going to call it.

They were not listening. They were angry. They said that they were not violent but that a group of men from the local truckers’ trade union were on their way. And that when they arrived things would definitely turn nasty. Our local fixers advised that we stop filming immediately, leave the cars on the gradients and go to a nearby hotel.

“This is a mafia state,” said one onlooker. “Best you do as you’re told.”

So we did, but going to the hotel did not work. A gang of people were waiting there. They said they were war veterans, which seemed unlikely as most were in their twenties and thirties. Bonnets were banged. Abuse was hurled. The police arrived and immediately breathalysed Andy Wilman, our executive producer — we’re not sure why.

Richard Hammond, James May and I bravely hid under the beds in a researcher’s room while protesters went through the hotel looking for us. The car park was filling up. More were arriving. This was starting to get ugly.

Back at home, newspapers were saying I had caused the problem by arriving in this political tinderbox in a Porsche bearing the numberplate H982FKL, which if you turned the H into a 1 and transposed the K and the L, could have been seen as a reference to the 1982 Falklands War.

This, however, was untrue. The car had indeed arrived in Argentina with those plates, but two days into our journey, when we were in Chile, a Twitter user pointed out the problem so we removed them.

When we arrived in Tierra del Fuego the car had no plate at all on the front and a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers on the back. And no, it wasn’ W3WON. Which it would have been if I’d been trying to ruffle feathers.

The numberplate then wasn’t the issue. But something was causing more and more people to arrive at the hotel. Twitter was rammed with messages from locals saying they wanted blood. One said they were going to barbecue us and eat the meat.

“Burn them. Burn their cars,” said another. Mob rule was in the driving seat.

Government officials then stepped in saying we were no longer welcome in the city, that our safety could not be guaranteed and that we needed to leave Argentina immediately. Plainly they had given us permission to visit simply so they could make political capital from ejecting us when we arrived.

The problem was: how do you leave when the streets are filled with mobs with pickaxe handles, paving stones and bricks? No one had an answer to that one.

Chile is a spit away across the Beagle Channel but we weren’t allowed to cross it because Argentina says it owns the land on the other side, too. We therefore gathered up as many possessions as we could, rounded up the girls from our party and made a dash for the airport.

That night we were in Buenos Aires among sensible Argentinians who couldn’t believe what had happened. And the next morning we were back in Britain.

We felt that with us three gone the situation might calm down. It didn’t.

We had left behind 29 people; cameramen, sound recordists, fixers, locals and producers. They had to make their escape overland in a ragtag collection of hired 4x4s, trucks and the three “star” cars that they had been told to remove from the ski resort.

They faced a long, bumpy and gruelling six-hour trek to the Chilean border and safety. But in the first town the locals were ready. A lorry was blocking the road and as our convoy approached, it reversed at speed towards them, forcing our guys onto the verges, which were filled with people who made it plain they wanted blood. Bricks were hurled, windscreens were smashed and two of the party were cut by flying glass. But they made it through.

And then they had a problem. The next city was Rio Grande. And the word from there was that 300 cars and thousands of locals were setting up an ambush. This turned out to be true.

The British embassies in Chile and Argentina were doing their best to get a police escort. And the nine of us who had escaped were in a hotel room in Buenos Aires working through the night to find a plane and an airfield from which they could get out because, make no mistake, lives were at stake.

Meanwhile, a chase had begun. Our guys were being herded towards the ambush. So they abandoned the star cars, which were filled with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of camera equipment — and my new hat — at the side of the road. And took off across the frozen wilderness to a remote border post where there isn’t even a road. You get into Chile by fording a river.

We had to get a tractor there to pull them across. And it had to be a fast tractor because we knew our convoy was being chased by the thugs. And you try finding a fast tractor at 2am, in the middle of nowhere. All credit to producer Al Renton that he did it.

With the batteries dying in the convoy’s satellite phone, we lost contact and for six hours had no clue whether they had been caught. Whether our friends were alive or dead. That was a long night. I still haven’t had a chance to speak to any of them but I know they were held at the Argentine border from 3am, when they arrived, until 11am. Why? To allow the thugs to catch up? Who knows? All I really care about is that they are now in Chile and safe.

Tierra del Fuego is not listed as a problem for visitors by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office but there is no question in my mind that we walked into a trap.

I know mischievous newspapers in Britain have said it was all my fault because of the numberplate. But that wasn’t even mentioned down there because the plate in question had been replaced.

No. We were English (apart from one Aussie camera guy and a Scottish doctor) and that was a good enough reason for the state government to send 29 people into a night filled with rage and flying bricks.

“Look what we’ve done,” they will say at the next elections. “Sent the English packing.”

That is true. We got our arses kicked. But there is a glimmer of a silver lining in the whole sorry affair. The game of football would have been a good ending for our Christmas special. But we’ve been gifted something even better by the region’s politicians and their rent-a-mob cohorts.

I’d like to say “gotcha” at this point. But I won’t.

Argentinians denounce '200 years of lies'

Argentine officials and newspapers seized the opportunity of the row over Top Gear’s visit to bash the British in general and the BBC in particular. One official even used it to restate Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, writes Clare Pennington and George Arbuthnott.

Jeremy Clarkson insisted he was unaware that his Porsche’s H982 FKL numberplate could be taken as an allusion to the 1982 conflict and had it removed as soon as he was alerted by Twitter protests.

But Mariano Plecity, the regional government minister in Tierra del Fuego where the incident happened, demanded a written apology from Clarkson and the Top Gear production team, stressing the importance to the region of the Malvinas, as the Falklands are known in Argentina.

“You have to take into account that the Malvinas belong to Tierra del Fuego and the city of Ushuaia is the capital of the Malvinas,” he said. “The licence plate number on the car was a provocation and a very big offence in all of Tierra del Fuego.”

Plecity said the most important thing for the local government had been that Clarkson “leave without his life being threatened, because had he stayed longer, the response from society would have been much bigger” Clarin, the top-selling newspaper in Argentina, rejected Clarkson’s explanation that the use of the numberplate had not been deliberate.

It quoted a member of the war veterans’ association as saying the British had a long-running habit of being dishonest.

“They say that they did not want to hurt our feelings but they have been lying to us for 200 years,” said Osvaldo Hilliar.

The strength of anti-British feeling in Tierra del Fuego is illustrated by the twinning earlier this year of Rio Grande, the province’s industrial capital, with Algeciras, a Spanish city near the British territory of Gibraltar, to which Spain has long maintained a claim.

Diario Popular, a Buenos Aires newspaper, said Top Gear had a record of offending foreign countries. It claimed Clarkson had “taunted Asians” with a reference to a “slope” on a bridge in Burma, for which an apology was later made.

The Top Gear presenters also previously risked a riot by driving into redneck country in the Deep South of America with cars including a pick-up truck with the words “man-love rules OK” on it.

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tazzieman Ferry's Protegé

tazzieman

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The classic car dealer who sold the Porsche with a controversial Falklands number plate to the BBC has revealed that he had hoped it would be used on a long-running series like Inspector Morse.

Mark Waring, of Surrey-based Rennsport Classics, said he had no idea that the car featuring the letters H982 FKL was to be used by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear.

 

“These rare cars are cherished, so when the BBC rang and explained they wanted to buy it, I had hopes that it would features on a series like Morse and be on screen for many years,” he said.

“It is the type of car that would be used on Morse. It’s a manual tourer, they are very rare. Naturally, this is not the kind of publicity that I had anticipated.

“I did ask what it would be used for but was told they could not and would not tell me.”

 

Clarkson, 54, was forced to flee Argentina under police escort when furious locals noted the number plate of the Porsche 928 and assumed it was a deliberate provocation about the 1982 Falklands War.

He and co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May fled their hotel and headed for the airport when the lobby was invaded by angry war veterans.

The remaining camera men, sound recordists, fixers and producers were pelted by stones as they were forced to escape to Chile overland, abandoning the offending Porsche at the border.

The controversy was only fuelled when police found another set of plates reading BE11 END in the vehicle.

Mr Waring said the unnamed BBC employee who purchased the car in August was specifically looking for a manual 928 and would not have had much choice in the market place.

He implied that there was no way the BBC could have known what the number plate was until they had seen the car as they were “always blacked out”.

He said that after the Top Gear debacle became public knowledge, he went to speak to the person from whom he had bought the Porsche as a matter of courtesy.

“If people approach me to sell a cherished car, I endeavour to sell it to someone who will continue to look after it in a way the previous owner had,” he said.

“I explained what I had done and how the transaction had been conducted. I explained that although I knew the BBC were buying the car, I was not aware it was Top Gear that it was going to be used on.

“He understood that if you find out two days later that the car has been fired into space, there is nothing you can do about it. You can only try your best. As passionate as I am about them, they are only cars.”

Mr Waring denied that he had been “gagged” by the BBC, insisting that they had contacted him to inform him of his rights.

He said he would never disclose the personal details of either the buyer or a seller of any car due to client confidentiality.

The Porshe is now expected to be scrapped or sold at auction. And in a further blow for Clarkson and his team, Argentina is considering whether or not to open a formal inquiry as the use of different number plates to those that appear in a car's official documentation is a crime which carries a maximum three year prison sentence.

The BBC has insisted that it did not know about the offending number plate until the car was unloaded from a shipping container in Argentina.

A spokeswoman said: "The manual Porsche 928 was one of the three cars the team wanted to take to Argentina. A member of the Top Gear team found one advertised and a member of production went to buy it and had it shipped.

"It was only driven with that plate for two or three days. As soon as the team became aware of criticism building on Twitter, it was changed."

 

 

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