Jeremy Clarkson, the host of the BBC’s internationally popular car show Top Gear, has had to respond to allegations that he used the ‘n-word’ while filming a segment for the show a few years ago. He was accused of using the word while singing a nursery rhyme and it was later edited out when the show aired. However, the unedited version has surfaced.
The Daily Mirror obtained the unedited takes for the segments, in which Clarkson sings “Eeny, meeny miny moe.” He apparently mumbles, “Catch a n***** by his toe.”
On Thursday, Clarkson tweeted, “I did not use the n word. Never use it. The Mirror has gone way too far this time.” An hour later, he sent a full message using Twitpic, in which he explained that there were three takes of him singing the rhyme. In the first two takes, he did mumble the “n-word,” but tried to make it inaudible. However, he admitted that if you turned the volume way up, it does sound like he actually said it. In the third take, he replaced the word with “teacher.”
Clarkson said he was “horrified” that it sounded like he said the word. He then read a note he wrote to the producers, asking them specifically not to use that take. “I did everything in my power to not use that word,” he said. He then closed the video by begging for forgiveness for apparently not trying hard enough to keep that take from ever going public.
“Jeremy Clarkson has set out the background to this regrettable episode,” the BBC said in a statement. “We have made it absolutely clear to him, the standards the BBC expects on air and off. We have left him in no doubt about how seriously we view this.”
The Top Gear crew has also been forced to apologize for using the racist term “slope” during an episode in Burma and Thailand. The show’s executive producer called it a “light-hearted word play joke referencing both the build quality of the bridge and the local Asian man who was crossing it.” However, if they knew the term was considered offensive in other parts of the world, “we would not have broadcast the word in this context and regret any offence caused.”