The Grand Tour

The BBC will sue The Grand Tour if they do any of these ridiculous things

Apparently, The Grand Tour’s legal team are so scared of getting sued by the BBC that they’ve handed Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May a massive list of things they can’t do or say.

The ridiculous list includes: complimenting Namibia’s scenery, James May saying the word ‘cock’, or Jeremy introducing the news as ‘the news’.

Andy Wilman, Clarkson’s friend and producer of the new Amazon show, said lawyers had warned the presenters they risked being sued by the BBC if they incorporated elements that were too similar to Top Gear, The Telegraph reports.

They got funnier and funnier. We went to Namibia to make a big film. The lawyers got out a film we had done [for Top Gear] in Botswana. The lawyers go through everything and they said, ‘There’s a scene in [Top Gear] where you’re in the middle of the Okavango and you go, “This scenery is beautiful”, so watch that you don’t do that.”

“So we were in the desert in Namibia and we had to go, “for legal reasons, this scenery is shit”. – Andy Wilman

The new show’s studio – a big tent they move to a different location for each episode – will include a leaderboard showing how well different cars had performed, but with no handwritten lap times for fear of standing on Top Gear’s toes.

Discussions became particularly ridiculous when Wilman was forced to examine James May’s use of the word cock, as he frequently said it on the BBC show.

Wilman also accepted that he and the presenters had a ‘broken relationship’ with the BBC before Clarkson was sacked for punching a producer, but thinks the corporation should have fined the presenter rather than axing him.

The new show is set for release at the end of Autumn, and no doubt the BBC will have their beady eyes on it for any legal infringements.

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14 comments

Bart Girangaya April 26, 2021 at 12:57 am

The bbc Need to stop all of their legal b.s. They are the ones that screwed up by firing Jeremy Clarkson. when they did that they lost the two other presenters. I feel that Jeremy Clarkson should have kept the rights to Top Gear this way here the BBC couldn’t say crap. I’ve stopped watching top gear sense they dismiss Clarkson I now watch the grand tour. So screw you BBC.

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me November 6, 2016 at 10:28 am

BBC lost before first shot fired.

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Sandy Eisele September 30, 2016 at 10:46 pm

Every time a scene is cut, a message should be placed on the screen that says “Censored by the BBC”.

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alex September 22, 2016 at 11:55 am

BBC can get stuffed. They need to just admit they screwed up and move on instead of looking like cry babies in the eyes of the public. The Grand Tour will decimate TopGear in the ratings and the BBC know this so the BBC trying is desperately to disrupt The Grand Tour as much as possible. But TGT will have the last laugh, the way they paid out 5th Gear, the Morris owners Club etc…the BBC and TG will just become the new laughing stock of these three. If these three were influential enough for Tesla to sue them, for Koenigsegg to add a spoiler etc. then these three will be influential enough to be a thorn in BBC’s side…and all because the BBC are being cry babies.

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P. Lyu September 14, 2016 at 11:49 pm

Did Chris Evans do the news?How did BBC make such a fuckin’ idiotic decision?

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Bart Girangaya April 26, 2021 at 12:53 am

The bbc needs to stop the leagal crap plus clarkson should have kept the rights to top gear for this reason..

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gtrgtr September 7, 2016 at 6:34 pm

Let Commies from BBC have they cock, but I’m afraid that most of them are really enjoy cock in dally basis 🙁

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OvenMaster August 28, 2016 at 3:50 am

This is nothing but the BBC practicing IP copyright trolling to an idiotic degree. In the US, David Letterman was threatened in the same way when he moved from NBC to CBS. The NBC lawyers said he couldn’t take any of their “intellectual property” (such as it was) so Letterman merely changed the name of his sketches. and characters. Unless words like “cock” are actually and provably copyrighted, the BBC can get stuffed.

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the guy with no name August 27, 2016 at 10:08 pm

Now the BBC are being a bunch of retarded sore losers.

This could set a new trend. Whenever the guys want to say anything on the list they can say “For legal reasons…*the opposite of xyz* ” and then copyright it so that the BBC can’t say those things.

Or they should just copyright their names so that nobody from BBC can say Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond or James May.

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Sav August 27, 2016 at 5:42 pm

BBC what a bunch of wanks!

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Jarrod August 27, 2016 at 12:00 pm

Fuck off BBC

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vancouver bill August 27, 2016 at 4:19 am

no I dont think so ….email campaign may be necessary to point out the beebs stupidity…again….
they should just say cock and the news as often as possible under different circumstances during filming until the beeb lawyers see how stupid they will look in the ‘court of public opinion’…
not to mention more publicity for the grand tour..
‘and then my lord they did willfully use the word cock in the next scene… and in the one following as well.

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amvj August 26, 2016 at 4:49 pm

I dont get it. So that term ‘cock’ is a BBC copyright thing ?

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kev August 26, 2016 at 12:14 pm

Cock !

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