Countries that Clarkson and Top Gear have offended

THE BBC motoring show Top Gear is once more under a cloud of controversy after making culturally insensitive comments. Regular viewers will barely have raised an eyebrow at the programme’s Christmas special, which saw the trio of presenters making a car journey across India, complete with jokes about diarrhoea. However, the Indian High Commission has taken exception and written a letter of complaint to the BBC. They are not the first country to have been offended by Jeremy Clarkson's series...
 
Germany
 
An episode originally aired in November 2005 saw Jeremy Clarkson quipping that BMW ought to make a "quintessentially German car" that would have indicators that gave Nazi salutes, "ein fan belt that will last a thousand years" and "a sat-nav that only goes to Poland".

Predictably, this didn't go down very well with the German government, but the BBC Governor's Programme Complaints Committee found in favour of Clarkson saying "the remarks would not have led to anyone entertaining new or different feelings or concerns about Germans or Germany".  
 
Romania
 
November 2009 found the presenters in Romania, a place described by Clarkson as "Borat country". Later, Clarkson tried on a pork pie hat that he called a "gypsy hat" and said he was wearing it so the gypsies would think he was one of them.

The Romanian ambassador to the UK showed surprising generosity in his inevitable letter of complaint, expressing admiration for the show before pointing out factual inaccuracies and requesting that repeats of the show be reedited accordingly.

The incident also led to The Daily Telegraph's website being hacked by angry Romanians, who declared "thanks to Top Gear we have been insulted" and covered two pages of the site in Romanian flags.  
 
Mexico
 
In a January 2011 episode, presenter Richard Hammond dismissed a Mexican sports car by saying "Mexican cars are just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle as a coat".

Clarkson then predicted Hammond's assessment would get no complaints because the ambassador would be too lazy to issue any.

The ambassador did in fact complain, along with hundreds of other Mexicans, while in Mexico the "jokes" were met with fury. The outcry led to both the BBC and the show's executive producer issuing apologies.
 
Albania
 
Just one week after attracting international condemnation for its comments about Mexico, the show headed to Albania for an episode in which a great deal of the "humour" was derived from the idea that the country is, as the The Guardian put it, "a nest of Mafia car thieves".

A lot of mileage was drawn from the implication that many people travel from Albania to England to steal cars that they then take back to Albania.

Fortunately for the BBC the Albanian ambassador took a philosophical approach and, while an embassy source said the mafia stereotype "could be a trying one", his boss chose to let the insult pass without comment. ·