N-word apology
Clarkson begs for viewers forgiveness after he appears to use N-word during filming of an episode of TV series, Top Gear.
Ordinarily I don’t respond to newspaper allegations but on this occasion I feel I must make an exception. A couple of years ago I recorded an item for Top Gear in which I quote the rhyme “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”. Of course, I was well aware that in the best-known version of this rhyme there is a racist expression that I was extremely keen to avoid. The full rushes show that I did three takes. In two, I mumbled where the offensive word would normally occur and in the third I replaced it altogether with the word teacher. Now when I viewed this footage several weeks later I realized that in one of the mumbled versions if you listen very carefully with the sound turned right up it did appear that I’d actually used the word I was trying to obscure. I was mortified by this, horrified. It is a word I loathe and I did everything in my power to make sure that that version did not appear in the program that was transmitted…I have here the note that was sent at the time to the production office and it says:
I didn’t use the N-word here but I’ve just listened through my headphones and it sounds like I did. Is there another take that we could use?
Please be assured I did everything in my power to not use that word, as I’m sitting here begging your forgiveness for the fact my efforts obviously weren’t quite good enough, thank you.
