Ken Block Hooned Around London For Top Gear And Now A Load Of People Are Angry

Over the weekend, Top Gear put on a pretty epic display of oversteer and tyre smoke with a certain Kenneth Block hooning around some closed roads in central London. Unfortunately, not everyone was happy about it. First up was Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne, who tweeted about the “noisy episode” of Top Gear being filmed, and urged host Chris Evans to “keep it down please.”

Not so much of an issue given that George Osbourne is probably one of the most hated men in Britain right now, but more serious was the anger caused by some of the rubber burning taking place near the Cenotaph, the Whitehall-based war memorial which hosts the National Service of Remembrance.

Lighting up the tyres on Block’s Mustang so close to the memorial has caused anger among many. Retired British Army Officer Colonel Richard Kemp hit out at the Top Gear production crew, likening the Cenotaph to a cemetery and branding the filming that took place near it as “gravely disrespectful”. He also expressed concern that the structure could have been damaged had something gone wrong.

Chris Evans has since apologised “unreservedly”, and of course, all of this is being portrayed in mainstream media as another disaster for the Top Gear reboot. But, since we have Top Gear causing offence and generating an enormous amount of publicity in the process, this all has an air of familiarity about it. How many times did Clarkson, Hammond and May cause uproar while filming the show? To me, this seems to be bringing back a sense of business as usual to proceedings.

As to the Cenotaph issue, I’m sure causing offence was the last thing the production team wanted to do, and some credit is due for Evans holding up his hands and apologising so swiftly.

What are your thoughts?