Top Gear Falklands Row Takes New Twist As Police Find 'B***end' Number Plates

This New Top Gear Number Plate Discovery Is Going To Be Tough For Clarkson To Explain...
|

As if Jeremy Clarkson wasn't in enough trouble already, now the Top Gear presenter is at the centre of a fresh Falklands row after a second set of number plates were discovered in the trunk of his Porsche.

After the BBC claimed it was purely coincidental that Clarkson was driving a car in Argentina with a H982 FKL number plate, local police have revealed another set of plates were found stashed in the car.

The discovery of the plates by officers has prompted accusations that the BBC had planned to mock Argentina all along.

Pictured below, it seems unlikely that the plates - which appear to spell out 'bell end' - are also coincidental.

Open Image Modal

The second set of plates

A BBC spokesman said of the "bellend" plates: "The number plate was not used at any point during filming. It was originally intended to be in the programme's final scene, a game of car football, but that ending has changed."

Clarkson was famously labelled a bellend by his Top Gear co-star James May earlier this year after he was accused of being a racist.

But a "local official" told The Mirror that the second set of plates were seen as "another insult to the people of Argentina."

"We know bellend doesn’t mean the end of the bell and is a word used instead to describe the head of the penis which is often employed as an insult in England," they were quoted as saying.

In the midst of the furore over the H982 plates, Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman said: "Top Gear production purchased three cars for a forthcoming programme; to suggest that this car was either chosen for its number plate, or that an alternative number plate was substituted for the original is completely untrue.”

But now, Argentine police have sent a judge decide whether to open a formal inquiry into the "provocation," the Telegraph reported.

Court sources told the newspaper that "the use of different number plates to those that appear in the car's official documentation would constitute a crime of falsification under article 289, section 3 of the country's penal code" - a crime that carries a maximum three-year jail sentence.

In yet more trouble for the BBC, the corporation has been accused of attempting to hush up a man involved in the scandal.

When asked about his Porsche, Mark Waring, of Surrey-based Rennsport Classics, told The Mirror that Top Gear officials had told him not to comment.

“You might not be surprised to know that I have been contacted by Top Gear and basically I can’t comment," he said.

“They have given me the number of the press office for you. So I can’t comment. I really can’t. I saw the car on the news and they called me a while after that.”

Open Image Modal

Jeremy Clarkson has denied the controversial number plate was deliberately selected

Clarkson, meanwhile, has claimed Argentinian officials tried to arrest members of Top Gear’s film crew, describing the whole incident as "the most terrifying thing I've ever been involved in", saying "someone could have been killed."

He said: "I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was the most terrifying thing I've ever been involved in.

"There were hundreds of them. They were hurling rocks and bricks at our cars.

"This is not just some kind of jolly Top Gear jape - this was deadly serious."

Continuing to insist his innocence, Clarkson said: "For once, we did nothing wrong. "

“They threw us out for the political capital. Thousands chased crew to the border. Someone could have been killed.

“We had planned a good ending for the show. But thanks to the government’s foolishness, it’s now even better.”