The Grand Tour

I hate people moaning about political correctness or health and safety laws too and I agree with this point. But you're creating arguments because of the potentially incorrect assumptions you are making about others in this conversation.

I think the schoolboy analogy is getting a bit out of control and whilst I fully understand your general point. I think you're using something very hypothetical and I don't think this is going to have a massive impact on playground bullies.

I'd be surprised if you've never talked amongst your social group speculating whether someone one is gay based on lifestyle choices or how they dress for example they're just having the sort of conversations gay and straight people might have all the time in real life.

I think there is an outrage here that wouldn't exist if this was something Graham Norton or Alan Carr commented on on their chat shows and I dislike the idea we should have exclusitivy on making light about things that sometimes separate gay people and straight people. Lets face it those two comedians whole shtick is based on a stereotypical idea of a gay man. Are you suggesting that kind of act shouldn't on television?

I really don't think this would be an issue if it was a joke about someones size or looks, which could be much more damaging to fat kid on the playground than the whats to me the very inoffensive view that gay men and more partial ice cream than straight men.

Whilst I can imagine some gay men may feel uneasy about their sexuality due to stereotypes of gay men not matching who they feel they are or how they want people to see them. That doesn't mean there isn't a reason the stereotypes exist and certain gay men themselves perpetuate those stereotypes quite happily.


I agree with this too in general, you don't have to be directly offended by something for it concern you. We just differ in the fact it doesn't concern me hugely.


In summary I don't believe people should be allowed to say whatever they want no matter who it offends, but I don't see this as malicious or understand why anyone would have enough energy to be offended by it.

I think you can have a view on the whether the comment was funny or not, and I don't think this is particularly having watched the clip outside of the context of the rest of show. You can have a view as to whether it's outdated humour or not. But I don't think there is enough of consensus for any sanctions or sacking over this, it's very subjective as to whether people are OK with it or not, so you would hope TGT would learn from it and are allowed to move on. After all I don't think people on television should have to be worried anything they say could be a career ender which seems to be what some people want.

Why, because people might now think you're gay?

Well this whole episode is not only a comment on gay men it's also a comment on straight men. Also there are loads of negative things about straight men that are said, like the idea straight men are less likely to look after themselves, or be good at dancing.

No. I don't care if people think I'm gay. I got a set of those Stonewall rainbow laces and I liked the way they looked so I kept them. There's two things that annoy me about this episode: firstly the assumption, and then assertion, and then reinforcement, that certain behaviours, tastes, perspectives or cultural choices are exclusive to one subset of humans or another. It glosses over a whole spectrum of nuance in favour of a black-and-white blunt fascistic imposed pigeon-holing by individuals who think they are arbiters of such qualities when in fact they are insanely unqualified to offer even mere opinions on matters which are so beyond their ken it is embarrassing. When these individuals are people in positions of power, influence or high standing, either earned or otherwise, this results in the sh*tstorm you have seen this week. The viewing public is immediately split into several polarised groups:

1) People who agree with Hammond that adult men who eat ice cream are homosexual
2) People who don't agree with Hammond and are "offended" by it.
3) People who don't agree with Hammond but aren't offended by it.
4) People who don't agree with Hammond but are offended by the people who are offended by it.

And this leads me onto the second thing that annoys me.... the fact that people are "offended" by it isn't the issue. It's your opinon, you can hold it, that's fair enough, no matter how tenuous the reason for your "offence." It's the fact that in this day and age of Twitter, Facebook and forums like this, you must now immediately seek out and band together with those who agree with you and shout down people who disagree with you. BECAUSE REASONS. Hammond's comment was crass, idiotic, ill-informed and prejudiced, no question. Straight adult men can eat ice cream, no argument there. But nowadays we're so focussed on what divides us rather than what unites us that tribalism over crass, idiotic, illinformed prejudicial things can take on a grisly life of its own. Which is a tiresome, boring, soul-destroying and demoralising thing to have to witness day in day out as a netizen.

And once again instead of talking about the content of the programme, a comment from one of the presenters takes centre stage. I notice it's the one who offended the country of Mexico. How much of his comment was theatre and provocation, no-one will know until his issues his heavily drafted statement whenever it comes, which again will provoke another flurry of wasted pixels and bring on premature carpal tunnel in furious keyboard warriors everywhere.

TLDR : Hammond is ignorant and should stick to talking about cars; the comment did nothing for the programme's entertainment or informative values. Also offence is something to be taken in the eye of the individual and not to be used as a rallying cry for a pointless online mass gathering of cyber-pitchfork-waving mercenaries.

I'm more offered by the point some draft git in the Amazon may have kept this in just to cause trouble to raise the profile of this half arse series, its done wonders everyone talking about The grand tour, In this line of business talking about bad or good isnt the point ts the fact people are talking about the series.

A lot of inappropriate conversations are had between friends in private - very different to sitting in a television studio on a fairly influential and popular programme. And yes, one incident is not going to have a huge impact on society either way, but how its dealt with will effect how the next is dealt with, and the one after that, and the one after that. To shrug each one off as unimportant is missing the bigger picture.

It appears they are deviating for the first time from their usual weekly schedule, with a two part special being released on consecutive days: Friday 30th and Saturday 31st.

Getting it out before people cancel their Amazon Prime free trials I guess.

I mean, surely that's fairly obviously a reason to *not* push them out too soon.

Though presumably there's nothing to stop someone getting Prime membership, watching or downloading all the episodes and then cancelling it again.

I seem to have signed up to Prime a few times without knowing it in the past and managed to get rid without paying

Amazon Video is always going to be a loss-leader for the company, the objective is to encourage customers to sign-up for a Prime membership. Even during the free trial, if they can get fans of the presenters to buy goods or other Amazon services, then it's a positive.

It surprises me therefore that there is so little Grand Tour merchandise on Amazon itself… a quick check and it only seems to be t-shirts and a hat at the moment.

They need to release a Grand Tour boxing glove, for when your dinner isn't ready.

And a Grand Tour ice cream scoop and bowl, that looks as gay and fabulous as possible of course.