Live and loud: Top Gear

ASB Showgrounds reverberated with the revving of supercars, chainsaws and stunt cars, as UK car show celebrities Jeremy Clarkson and James May joined Kiwi racing driver Greg Murphyon the stage at Top Gear Live...

We attended on Saturday 20 February in Auckland at the 7.30pm show, to see a bigger and better show than last year's inaugural show, we thought. With scripted lines and planned out jokes it's not an ad hoc comedy show, more like their top rating TV show where jokes are also scripted, although having said that the TV show's celebrity on the couch segment feels more 'live talk show' than scripted.

The live show format interchanged between patter (read: insults) with hosts Clarkson, May and Murph, and displays of driving, with some audience interartion thrown in. In contrast to the TV show, Clarkson was more raw and less PC than on BBC, making sexist jokes and rude comments about members of the audience's dress sense, all the while mocking himself.

The show opened with a fire dancing woman in black leather narrowly missing being run over by a car with a burning backseat.

Clarkson and May took to the stage and made jokes about Richard Hammond, who had come last year instead of James May, undertaking the Telecom X2 network TV ads with a link to Hammond's castle failing as May used the fated X2.

Car races through the decades set to appropriate music played on the big screens as the Top Gear Live stunt drivers screamed around in four small Fords. Murph showed up in a ute and their first host race was introduced: making cars from items found at the garden centre.

James May made a twin engined front wheel drive motorcycle from whipper snippers, Murph made a sun lounger powered by six chainsaws - which won- and Clarkson made a Flym hovercraft with leaf blowers, which came last.

Clarkson's losing hovercraft.

Clarkson recovered from his loss by poking fun at the crowd on a walkabout, ridiculing a man for having a handlebar moustache and a shirt made from his mother's curtains but identifying with the bad dress sense as he was awarded joint worst dressed man on British television with James May (and Hammond hired a stylist but still got fourth worst place!) Clarkson found a long-haired man he called Jesus and asked what he drives. "Jesus drives a Holden Statesman!" he declared in great mirth.

Next up: audience participation with the Cool Wall. The crowd could hold up green or red sides of cards for a sensor to detect and move each car to the sub zero, cool or uncool side of the screen. The Fiat 500, the new Rolls Royce, BMW M3, new Porsche 911 and Mercedes SL all were awarded cool status. Clarkson then shot a photo down a woman's top of her cleavage to use as the photo to represent tonight's show on the lap times board.

Time for some more rubber hitting the metal. The Tokyo Drivers skidded around a pony-tailed long sock-wearing woman in Evos with manga livery with a police car (rebranded with 'To Punish and Enslave') in hot pursuit.

A hot pink Evo painted in Asian manga atop the platform.

And back to our hosts. Clarkson, mocker of all things environmental, is surprisingly riding a bicycle- but no ordinary bicycle- it is fitted with a jet pack. He rides it in a loop and off stage to a massive crash sound which fails to get much audience excitement as is very clearly slapstick stagery and May has to come on and pretend he's dead and in true British fashion, say, "Anyway..." This segment was mildy amusing but failed to fire on all cylinders.

Apparently there's a very famous USA stunt race driver called Ken Block whom Top Gear interviewed on the last season and James May rode passenger whilst Ken Block performed tricks. They showed footage of the episode with a very frightened-looking May, and played a voice message of Ken Block saying, "I'm not coming to Auckland as James peed on my seat." In lieu of the real Ken Block, they 'found' another 'Ken' backstage, an unlikely looking suspect; balding, bespectacled and older. This Ken predictably can drive extremely well and does some fast laps in a Ken painted car.

Next up: the supercars.

A short clip from Top Gear played where Clarkson lamented that he thought "due to the economy, the environment and the nanny state, it'd be the end of the supercar." But he's wrong. To incredibly over-loud orchestral music perhaps trying to create an aura not dissimilar to the alien ship landing in Third Encounters, out come various supercars. a Ferrari 599, F40, Enzo, Lamborghini Murchielago, V8 Vantage, DB5 and a rally car I think was called a X PO.

Below: a Lamborghini Murchielago. Clarkson says the best car he and the Stig have ever driven is the Aston Martin DB5, but Murph says he would have to choose a Holden: room for your tool, your dog, your meat pie, and your girlfriend.

The audience race pitched in two teams on each side of the stadium using shouting to accelerate and green and red cards for left and right, all read by the sensors. We failed to beat a show in South Africa.

A giant soccer ball came on stage for a game of Minis captained by Murph for NZ and May for England. The score was 5-2 to NZ.

They remade Hammond's Telecom X2 commercial proving he never as stated in the illfated ad, tested planes - as he doesn't have a pilot's licemce- adn tested boats - as he vomited over the side with seasickness.

The Stig did battle in "Carmageddon", a mock fight-to-the-death TV show on BBC5 where the public are pitted against gladiator cars Shadow, Longbow and The Warthog. Stig emerged victorious and did a triumphant lap - a vertical lap that is- on the Loop Of Death.

Below Stig vs the Warthog

Photos and story, Megan Robinson 20 February 2010.