★★★★★ 0/5

Stig claims: “Bullied” by Top Gear

Ben Collins says he made the move to publish his autobiography when it was feared his place on Top Gear was not secure.

5
Leave a comment

Ben Collins has hit back at scorn from the Top Gear camp after he was revealed as helmeted driver The Stig.

Collins says he made the move to publish his autobiography when it was feared his place was not secure.

He also accused the show of bullying.

He said: “When we first met, Jeremy told me I ‘drove like a homosexual’ but he works tirelessly to make the show the success it is and likes everyone to be pulling in the same direction.”

Collins insists he did everything possible to stay incognito, including hiding his car, wearing a balaclava to work and walking around the set ‘like a Storm Trooper’.

However an article in the BBC-owned Radio Times in November 2008 under the headline ‘Who is The Stig?’ carried a picture of Collins plus ‘one unlikely candidate.’

“I was astonished. I was being outed by the very people I worked for. Yet I knew nothing about it,” he told The Sun.

He was also told someone else could drive as The Stig in his ‘dream’ contest, the Le Mans 24-hour race while a new driver was hired for a series of live Top Gear shows.

Collins claims he had little pay, no long-term contract, no pension and was forced to pay his own insurance.

Source: Daily Mail

5 Responses

  1. He’s just some local driver. Does anyone care at all about this bloke? Get him out, throw in the next local track driver.He’ll I’d suggest the vast majority of times you see The Stig anyway its an actor standing in during the non driving moments of the show!

  2. The guy was in a technical role as a driver. To be more interesting the show had the stig character to mask such a role. It just seems the guy became to think he was the character.

  3. “Collins claims he had little pay, no long-term contract, no pension and was forced to pay his own insurance.”

    I read that his pay was something like £10,000 per episode. ‘Little pay’ my a*se.

    As for the other things … when was the last time you met an independent contractor that Didn’t have to cover their own super and insurance obligations? That’s what happens when you’re a contractor and not an employee. If he didn’t like the conditions, he shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.

  4. All of that may well be true, however if he didn’t like his conditions, he could have just seen out his contract and moved on. No one was forcing him to work for them, and ‘low-pay’ and no pension are not reasons to Violate a contract that you have signed.

    The notion that he had to reveal his identity because he didn’t feel his job was safe is ridiculous. How safe is his job now that he Has revealed it?

    Then again all of this could be a preorganised publicity stunt.

Leave a Reply