Top Gear Live

The other day I went to see Top Gear Live in London. It was brilliant. Jeremy Clarkson made loads of funny and insightful jokes about Andrew Sachs and derided an audience member for having a tasteless watch. But he also made a Rossian gaff of his own. He mocked a black man for having a beard, before getting worried that he had caused offence and asked ‘unless you are a Muslim?’, which dug him in deeper. Realising this he said ‘I’m going to be shot now’, by which I assume he meant by the PC brigade, but everyone thought he was referring to a terrorist attack. This shows how worried he is about current trends in the way the media is handled. It would be easy to get offended by the mistake he made at Top Gear Live if you assume that he was out to cause offence. Before getting offended people should ask themselves on simple question: did the person causing offence do so with malice? Because if not, they have probably misunderstood them.