Tonight, on Top Gear: Angela Rippon visits Toddington Services to discuss the price of sausages; a man with a quiff tries to drive an Opel Manta as fuel-efficiently as possible through Wales; and the Minister for Transport explains why actually, wearing a seatbelt is quite a good idea.
This is not some self-parodying introduction dreamt up by Clarkson and Co. when modern-day Top Gear was at its peak. Instead, it’s the contents of the very first episode of the show’s original incarnation from 1977, which has just been made watchable by the BBC after years of not being available publicly. Back then, a 17-year-old Clarkson was probably sneaking cigs behind the sixth form bike shed, seven-year-old Hammond was likely playing with Scalextric, and the 14-year-old May would have been… who knows, giving piano recitals?
Image © BBC
It may have used the same theme tune – the Allman Brothers Band’s Jessica – and been largely about cars, but that’s pretty much the extent of the similarities between this iteration of the show, which The Radio Times called “the first of a monthly series for road users,” and the tyre-smoking, caravan-destroying explosion fest the show would morph into in the 2000s.
Anchored in a studio by presenter Tom Coyne, the very first episode, which aired in April 1977, features such exciting content as roving reporter Angela Rippon driving her Ford Capri from London to Birmingham, stopping off at a service station for an in-depth report on the price of meals (although given this is 1970s Britain, there’s also some remarkably progressive commentary on female drivers).
Image © BBC
Elsewhere, we get a look at some 1970s policing tech used to catch speeding drivers, and there’s coverage of a truly thrilling two-day rally around Britain featuring some extremely normal 1970s cars in which the goal isn’t speed, but fuel efficiency. This one’s centred around the exuberantly hairstyled radio producer Mike Woodhead, who enters the rally in an Opel Manta, which doesn’t quite end the trip in the same condition it started in.
Finally, we return to the studio for an interview with William Rodgers, at the time Britain’s Minister for Transport. Coyne grilles him on what he plans to do to make life easier for the motorist, with topics including the mandatory wearing of seatbelts and cracking down on drink driving. It was a different time.
Image © BBC
Not only is this a fascinating look at where one of the most beloved shows of a generation began, it’s a fascinating – and at times fairly bleak – vignette of life in late ’70s Britain. Unsurprisingly, there is lots of smoking and many moustaches.
The episode’s available to watch – in the UK at least – for free on the BBC’s iPlayer streaming service for the next month or so. It was also shown over the weekend on the uber-geeky BBC Four TV channel, the first time in years the episode’s been this easily accessible.
Image © BBC
With TG now laid to rest for the foreseeable, the Beeb seems to be trawling its archives for content around the show – it also recently launched a YouTube channel for clips of the show’s Clarkson-Hammond-May heyday. We’re sincerely hoping this development means there’s more extra-vintage TG to come because almost 50 years later, it’s some of the most unintentionally hilarious TV we’ve ever seen.
