Clarkson, Hammond and May have already signed on with amazon prime to do a new show.

Clarkson, Hammond and May have already signed on with amazon prime to do a new show.

Now that I'll watch, Top Gear with a washed up actor not so much. They tried this same thing with Top Gear USA and it was a dismal failure so to think that by bringing the American to Britain it will improve the show is nothing more than a joke.

Now that I'll watch, Top Gear with a washed up actor not so much. They tried this same thing with Top Gear USA and it was a dismal failure so to think that by bringing the American to Britain it will improve the show is nothing more than a joke.

It might be better with Sabine Schmitz, but her English will need work.

Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years. In this context, disliking Top Gear because it doesn’t include enough women is a bit like hating Trident because those submarines simply don’t have enough room for your jumpers – it rather misses the point.

In some ways, of course, it is something that Schmitz will be presenting Top Gear. At least Schmitz might actually know something about these guff-chugging misery wagons. But oh how I wish women on television were more present when discussing health, politics, international relations, history and culture from the equity of female experience. Not just joining a franchise made famous for making bad jokes about – among other things – sexually transmitted infections, “poor people”, a soft clutch, homosexuality, Germans, “unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite”, domestic violence, murdering sex workers, and women drivers.