The Top Gear hosts have been accused of making “bigoted, outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults” about Mexicans, by the Mexican ambassador, no less.
In Sunday’s episode of wildly popular BBC show, Top Gear, recently garlanded with a National TV Award for most popular factual show, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond made the comments while reviewing a Mexican sports car.
Hammond joked that cars reflect national characteristics which meant Mexican cars “were ‘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 on as a coat’.
May chipped in describing Mexican food as ‘like sick with cheese on it’ while Clarkson said he was confident they would not receive any complaints about their comments because the Mexican ambassador would be asleep. To illustrate his point he emitted a loud snoring noise.
However Mexican ambassador Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza who was not asleep and did, in fact, watch Top Gear, took offence and promptly made a complaint to the BBC.
“The presenters of the programme resorted to outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults to stir bigoted feelings against the Mexican people, their culture, as well as their official representative in the United Kingdom,” he wrote.
“These offensive, xenophobic and humiliating remarks only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate prejudice against Mexico and its people.”
He also insisted that the Top Gear trio apologise for their comments.
