this will ruin top gear

Leave Top gear as it is!!


Equality Bill could force Top Gear to drop the boys' club attitude

By staff writers

NEWS.com.au

April 30, 2009 02:01am


POPULAR boy-racer TV show Top Gear may be forced to hire new presenters as part of a government push to make the show more gender and ethnically balanced.

This week the Equality Bill was introduced into Britain which encourages employers to take "positive action" to widen diversity in the public sector workforce.

Top Gear, along with a number of shows funded by the BBC, now fall under the Bill.

There has been pressure on the boys who review their mechanical toys to change, with a leading academic earlier this month saying that the BBC should employ more women to help make shows such as Top Gear "female-friendly", reports London’s Daily Mail.

Dr Louise Livesey, tutor in sociology and women's studies at Oxford, accused Top Gear of "entrenched, institutional sexism".
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Your Say

Why? This is outrageous. How politically correct has this world become?

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Irits

As well as being hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, the car show has a "boys' club" production team and fewer female than male guests, it was claimed.

But Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman claimed it was "utter drivel" to suggest that the show excluded women, saying: "If the show is allegedly female-unfriendly, why is almost half the audience female?

"Secondly, if we are to have a female presenter just to represent the sexes, then by that logic Loose Women needs a bloke in the line-up pretty sharpish.

"I actually believe these sorts of mandates are patronising to women viewers, because they assume that women can't enjoy a show's presenters on merit, but can only appreciate a program if spoken to by one of their own sex."

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,28383,25407422-10229,00.html