The Stig is free to speak

Petrol heads in Britain all know (and adore) Top Gear's The Stig. The Stig is a tame racing driver whose identity is supposed to be a secret, and has strange and often effeminate taste in music.

With the power off the internet it is more and more difficult for such secrets to last forever. It took longer than many might have expected, but eventually gossip blogs and newspapers revealed that the racing driver Ben Collins was the Stig. Does it surprise anyone that this trivial secret made it to the public considering how many millions around the world were desperate to know his identity? Quite frankly, no.


Ben Collins, also known as The Stig was in the process of putting together his memoirs and writting his autobiography.. The book was full of stories about his time as the Stig.As soon as the Top Gear team and producers at the BBC came to realize that The Stig's identity was no longer a mystery, he was "let go".

Whether or not you agree with that decision, or the extreme significance linked to keeping the Stig's identity a secret is beside the point. The most important legal issue is that the BBC filed and injunction against Ben Collins in an attempt to prevent him from publishing his memoirs.

There is some appropriate legal precedent that needs to be brought up at this point, as we can't all be solicitors in West London. Perhaps not everyone is mindful but the government can censor confidential information that is due to be made public, provided it is not already public knowledge.

Given that prior to Ben Collins autobiography there were already keen Top Gear fans insisting that he was indeed The Stig, in hinds sight it was completley ludicrous to try and prevent this book being published. Any lawyer in London would find the BBC legal case severely lacking.evaluation, and ruled against the BBC|Thankfully the High Courts also believed that the BBC was over stepping the mark and in the end ruled against them}.

Many might argue that the extreme lengths the BBC went to in order to prevent the publication of the book was nothing more than a waste of the taxpayers money and the High Courts time . It seems like the government could be doing something more constructive with taxpayer money than spending money on solicitors in London to fight the publication of a celebrity's autobiography.

Even worse than wasting public resources, however, was the attempt by the BBC to unjustifiably control the free speech of a man who had been enforced to conceal his identity or years. What is particularly upsetting is that the BBC has a history of defending free speech. It seems a shame to tarnish years of promoting civil rights with a silly lawsuit against a racecar driver.

Some have suggested that BBC's long standing fued with Rupert Murdoch is behind their actions, as Ben Collins' book is being published by Harper Collins, which Murdock owns . Rupert Murdoch is no friend of the BBC (and the free world), and his media empire and the BBC have been fighting it out for some time. Whilst this explanation is plausable due to the well documented facts about the BBC and Rupert Murdoch, the motivation of Ben Colins to shed light on his time as The Stig is even greater.