14 DAY TRIAL // Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has yet again met with misfortune while filming the iconic motoring show, except this time it almost cost him his life. The British TV personality decided to talk to the media about what really happened in Argentina and it turns out that the situation was really hairy at some point.
Clarkson, who has been skating on very thin ice with the BBC lately thanks to numerous scandals on and off the screen, was almost stoned to death by angry Argentinians while he was filming a Top Gear special in their country.
The scandal was caused by a car number plate thought to be referring to the Falkland's War
Speaking to the Daily Mail, the presenter claims that the locals went mad when they saw his license plate which read “H982 FKL.” They thought this was a reference to the Falklands War, an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Argentina that took place in 1982 over the Falkland Islands and which the Argentinians lost.
Naturally, many took offense and decided to punish the TV presenter who now admits he “hid under the beds in a researcher's room” together with Richard Hammond and James May, his co-presenters, “while protesters went through the hotel looking for us.”
Jeremy added that the locals went so bloodthirsty that they were threatening to barbecue them and eat the meat. The team managed to get out of the country under heavy police escort, despite the fact that they had changed numbers on the car when the coincidence was pointed out to them and apologized for the confusion.
Clarkson claims it was all just an unfortunate coincidence, apologized to those he offended
Clarkson swears that this time it wasn't one of their tasteless jokes they do on the show, it was simply an unfortunate coincidence, but the Argentinian officials still demanded a written apology.
“I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was the most terrifying thing I've ever been involved in. There were hundreds of them. They were hurling rocks and bricks at our cars. This is not just some kind of jolly Top Gear jape - this was deadly serious,” Clarkson said later.
On his Twitter page, the presenter gave a few more details, like the fact most of the war veterans he had angered were in their 20s, meaning that weren't even born when the war took place. He also posted a photo of the car he drove with the plates removed, indicating that there was no reason for violent reactions and that the event had merely escalated through the power of social media.
The question is whether now Clarkson is going to be fired from BBC, since he was already on scandal-watch since the last time he caused trouble to the British network. He was bluntly told by execs that if there were another scandal, he would be promptly sacked from the position of lead presenter of Top Gear, a position he's held for decades.
This was not a jolly jape that went awry. For once, we did nothing wrong.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) October 4, 2014
We had planned a good ending for the show. But thanks to the government's foolishness, it's now even better.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) October 4, 2014
They threw us out for the political capital. Thousands chased crew to border. Someone could have been killed.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) October 4, 2014