Entertainment

‘JACKASS’ ON WHEELS

Imagine going to your office one day and looking out of your sad cubicle and seeing a tiny blue car slightly larger than a supermarket cart drive snugly past your desk.

If you work at the BBC in London, this has definitely happened to you. Jeremy Clarkson, the incredibly eccentric co-host of the indelibly odd car show “Top Gear,” drove the world’s smallest car, a 1963 Peel P50 microcar, alongside double-decker buses and onto an elevator at BBC headquarters so he could attend a meeting.

“When you get to work, you pick it up and carry the car inside,” quips Clarkson as stunned office workers look on.

Americans can see that stunt on this week’s episode of the show, airing Monday night at 8 p.m. on BBC America.

Clarkson’s stunt is just one of hundreds performed regularly on the popular British series that is now airing on BBC America. “Top Gear” has been around in England since 1977, starting out as a conventional car magazine show and morphing into its present, daredevil form in 2002.

In recent years, the show has been catching on with American audiences. Mention “Top Gear” and someone you know is likely to star talking about their favorite episodes. Maybe it’s the one where the loquacious Clarkson races his co-hosts, Richard Hammond and James May, to Monte Carlo from Surrey, England. Hammond and May take the high-speed Eurostar and TGV trains, with lovely cocktails to pass the time; he drives an Aston Martin DB. Clarkson was already relaxing at a cafe when Hammond and May were dragging their luggage from the train station to try to beat him.

An equally amusing episode found the hosts turning ordinary cars into stretch limos and then chauffeuring celebrities across London to an awards show. Clarkson ran into a spot of trouble when his elongated Fiat Panda broke in half en route.

There is no stunt that seems beyond the reach of this show. May decided in one episode to see if he could sail his car across the English Channel.

Even if engines and carburetors are not your thing, “Top Gear”‘s celebrity segment, “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car,” shows some of Britain’s high and mighty doing something very silly – driving around a race track. Dame Helen Mirren recently donned a helmet and got behind the wheel of a Ford Escort. So far, “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell set the fastest lap time of any celebrity in the Chevrolet Lacetti.

In short, “Top Gear” is “Jackass” on wheels and since pictures are worth a thousand words, we have chosen some of the show’s unforgettable images to get the point across. If you can’t catch the episodes on BBC America, you can always watch them broken down into hilarious segments on YouTube. American television producers plan to adapt “Top Gear” for stateside audiences, but you know it’s going to have some bland, Ryan Seacrest-style host and the usual has-beens, so why not enjoy the original?