Glyn#StandUp4Brexit

A plate of cold meat cost the BBC the biggest show it had. Amazon picked up the audience in a deal reported at £160 million. March 2015. North Yorkshire. After a long day of filming, Jeremy Clarkson is told the chef has gone home. He's offered soup and cold cuts. He punches producer Oisin Tymon, who ends up in hospital. His BBC contract runs out that same month. It isn't renewed. Tymon later settles for £100,000 and an apology. Here's what the BBC was giving up: → 2006: Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman start a company selling Top Gear's merchandise and overseas rights → 2007: BBC Worldwide buys just over half → 2012: it buys the rest. Clarkson's share pays him about £8.4 million → In one year, that business brings in £149 million → The show reaches an estimated 350 million viewers The BBC owned all of it. Everything except the three men people actually watched. July 2015: Amazon signs Clarkson, Hammond, May and Wilman for 36 episodes. The Grand Tour becomes Prime Video's most-watched premiere to that point. May 2016: the BBC relaunches Top Gear with Chris Evans. 6.42 million watch the first episode. Five weeks later: about 1.9 million. A record low. Down roughly 70%. Evans quits the next day. A year after the split, the BBC asks Clarkson what went wrong. He says the show kept growing and "the lack of support was appalling." At Amazon, he says, you send a film and people in Los Angeles "ring up and squeak with joy." At the BBC you never get that, "ever." And the £160 million? He says Amazon paid "way less than all these speculations." The BBC kept the name. Clarkson took the audience. Who really won?