Ignore The Rumours: Top Gear's Executive Producer is Not Leaving The Show

Top Gear’s executive producer, Andy Wilman, yesterday sent an email to everyone who has worked on the show in the last 13 years telling them they should be proud of what they created. The email was leaked by one of the email’s recipients and given to Jalopnik, who reproduced it claiming it was confirmation of Wilman’s resignation.

Today the long-time friend of Clarkson has come out to officially deny it was a resignation letter. In a statement, Wilman said:

“The email I wrote yesterday was not a resignation statement, and nor was it meant for public consumption.

“It was a private note of thanks to 113 people who have worked on the show over the years, but clearly one of those 113 is a bit of a tit, because they shared it with a website.

“I don’t get this modern obsession with sharing, linking, forwarding, retweeting; whatever happened to a private moment?

“And if I were to resign, I wouldn’t do it publicly, I’d do it old school by handing in my, er, notice, to someone upstairs in HR.

“I work behind the camera and I wouldn’t presume for one moment to think people are interested in what I do. Now, everyone back to work.”

While the sentiment is nice, I’d be surprised if he was naive enough to think that the letter wouldn’t make its way out. And with the knowledge that one of those 113 people would probably leak the email, how else did he expect people to take it? Just read the following paragraph from the email as an example:

For those of you who still rely on [Top Gear] for work, don’t worry, because the BBC will make sure the show continues. Our stint as guardians of Top Gear was a good one, but we were only part of the show’s history, not the whole of it. Those two words are bigger than us.

“For those of you” - that sure sounds like he’s not one of the people who still relies on it for work. “Our stint…was a good one” is past tense and implies he’s left. Which leads us to the question; is this follow up statement damage limitation before Wilman quietly steps down, or is it just another publicity stunt?

Either way, whether he’s naive or weirdly publicity hungry, his closing statement sums up how most of us are starting to feel about all of this, so let’s take his advice: “Now, everyone back to work.”