Another chapter in the Top Gear v Argentina saga unfolded as Alicia Castro slated Clarkson for ‘fabricating’ his version of events.
Argentina’s UK ambassador expressed her anger with the controversial Top Gear host when writing a piece for The Independent. She was particularly dismayed by the claims he made in a recent Sunday Times column which she believes are not truthful.
As most readers will already know, the BBC crew had to leave the country because of the trouble a Porsche with the registration number H982 FKL caused. Many people believed the plate was a reference to the Falklands conflict of 1982, an issue that is still incredibly sensitive to many Argentinians.
The show’s executive producer Andy Willman has vehemently denied the number plate was a “stunt” purposely designed to court controversy.
In a recent response to a Sunday Times article Clarkson wrote on October 5 explaining the incidents during filming, Ms Castro said: “The presenter – in his column entitled ‘Make no mistake, lives were at risk’ – fabricates an exaggerated story. He describes being ambushed by a mob branding ‘pickaxes’.
“Later, switching narrative style, he recounts another scene: Clarkson claims that a mob was trying to burn the crew’s cars – which I understand did not actually happen – and he goes so far as to affirm that ‘one said they were going to barbecue us and eat the meat’.”
In her article, Ms Castro also stressed that the crew were given safe passage across the border into Chile by Argentine authorities as soon as it seemed that the Top Gear’s safety may be compromised.
Clarkson’s alleged attempts to portray the Argentines as “savages” and his failure to acknowledge “the security extended to him by the government of Tierra del Fuego” greatly angered her.
She also took issue with the presenter’s decision to speculate on what might have happened as a result of the protests, rather than focusing on the facts. The envoy then spoke of Clarkson’s failure to accept that the troubles were linked to his own provocative behavior and had nothing to do with the fact they were English, as he asserted.
In a further attempt to rubbish this claim, Castro pointed to the 250,000 Brits currently living in the country as a sign of the “friendship” between the two nations.
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