The Stig is a character from the British motoring television show Top Gear. Created by former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman, the character is a play on the anonymity of racing drivers' full-face helmets, with the running joke that nobody knows who or what is inside the Stig's racing suit. The Stig's primary role is setting lap times for cars tested on the show. Previously, he would also instruct celebrity guests, off-camera, for the show's "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment.

The identity of the original "Black" Stig, Perry McCarthy, was exposed by a Sunday newspaper in January 2003, and confirmed by McCarthy later that year. The black-suited Stig was subsequently "killed off" that October in the series 3 premiere, and replaced in the following episode by a new White Stig who lasted through to the end of series 15.

In series 13 episode 1, the show jokingly unmasked the Stig as seven-time world champion F1 driver Michael Schumacher. In the hiatus following series 15, racing driver Ben Collins was revealed to be the Stig in a court battle over Collins's impending autobiography, titled The Man in the White Suit. In series 16, debuting in December 2010, Collins was replaced by a second White Stig, who was revealed by Clarkson in 2024 to be racing driver Phil Keen.

Creation and name

The idea for the character was part of former host Jeremy Clarkson and former producer Andy Wilman's concept for the relaunched Top Gear show, bringing a new format to the original version of Top Gear which ceased production in 2001. The relaunched show introduced a live studio audience, the Stig, a racetrack, and madcap stunts. Clarkson is credited with having come up with the original idea for the Stig.

Clarkson and Wilman wanted to have a professional racing driver as part of the show's cast, but ran into difficulty finding a driver sufficiently adept at speaking on-camera. Clarkson then asked Wilman why the driver needed to speak at all, and they decided that the Stig's role would be silent.

The name Stig derives from Wilman and Clarkson's time at Repton School, where new boys had always been called "Stig". "Stig" is a pejorative referring to someone from a poor background with a poor dress sense (originating from the eponymous character in the children's book Stig of the Dump).

According to the original Stig, Perry McCarthy, speaking in 2006, the producers had first wanted the anonymous driver to be called "The Gimp", referring to the use of gimp suits in BDSM sexual role-playing. After McCarthy objected, they settled upon the name Stig. McCarthy had said of the idea at the time that "I don't want to be forever remembered as the Gimp".

Characteristics

Anonymity and silence

When introducing the Stig in the Top Gear premiere, Clarkson said, "We don't know its name, we really don't know its name, nobody knows its name, and we don't want to know, because it's a racing driver."

According to a 2006 article in The Sunday Times, most of the Top Gear crew did not know the Stig's identity; one camera assistant reportedly observed the Stig eating his lunch in the back of an ambulance to avoid being spotted. The Stig's muteness has extended to appearances in other media, such as the "Brain Stig" video released by the BBC on YouTube in 2009.

Clarkson has written in his newspaper column that the Stig is not permitted to talk or comment on the cars he is given to drive because "the opinions of all racing drivers are completely worthless", going on to explain that, because of their familiarity with cars equipped for track racing, racing drivers believe any and all road cars are inferior to racing cars.

Driving ability

The show has often compared the Stig's driving ability to others, particularly Formula One drivers. When Jeremy Clarkson said that the Stig believed that the Suzuki Liana, the show's Reasonably Priced Car at the time, could do a lap time of 1:44.0, former F1 driver Nigel Mansell, appearing as a guest on the programme, duly obliged by posting a time of 1:44.6; the Stig then posted a time of 1:44.4. Clarkson has often mentioned that F1 drivers seem to take a different racing line on the test track than the Stig, such as on Jenson Button's drive; F1 driver Mark Webber's appearance on the show was marked at the conclusion of his lap with Clarkson presenting him with an "I AM THE STIG" T-shirt.

  • He lives in a tree
  • He roams around the woods at night foraging for wolves
  • He sleeps upside-down like a bat
  • The drinks cabinet in his car contains 14 different types of custard
  • "Has dreams about what Rubens Barrichello would look like in a ham slicer" (a reference to Barrichello being faster than the Stig around the test track the week before)
  • "If he was getting a divorce from Paul McCartney, he'd keep his stupid whining mouth shut" (a reference to McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills in 2008)
  • "He always wears a helmet because a man once smashed him in the face with a model of Salisbury Cathedral" (a reference to the Silvio Berlusconi assault with an alabaster statuette of Milan Cathedral in December 2009)
  • "He's banned from the town of Chichester and..., in a recent late-night deal, he bought a slightly dented white Fiat Uno from the Duke of Edinburgh" (a reference to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana)
  • "If you hold him in the wrong way, he doesn't work properly" (a reference to the iPhone 4's death grip)
  • "He regrets buying his new holiday home in down-town Cairo" (a reference to the Arab Spring in early 2011)
  • "That sixty years ago this week, he too became a Queen" (a reference to the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, in 2012)
  • "He contains 47% horse" (a reference to the 2013 horse meat scandal)
  • "He used to work in Rome, but gave up his job to be able to keep up with his work here" (after the Pope's retirement in early 2013)
  • "As a result of buying Pirelli condoms this week, he now has seventeen children" (reference to multiple cars suffering blown Pirelli tyres at the 2013 British Grand Prix)
  • "On a recent trip to Cornwall, he stopped off for one of his special, big wees in Somerset" (a reference to the 2013 Somerset flooding)
  • "If he had worked for CNN, he wouldn't have got such pitifully low ratings that his show got cancelled" (a reference to the cancellation of Piers Morgan Live)
  • "While we were off air, his iCloud was hacked and now everyone in the world has seen his helmet" (a reference to the 2014 celebrity nude photo leak)
  • "Last week, he was found in a locked room, tied to a chair with German piano wire" (the week after Michael Schumacher was "revealed" as The Stig)
  • "He once punched a horse to the ground" (a reference to the story of Roberto Durán having done so)
  • "Long before anyone else, he realised that Jade Goody was a racist, pig-faced waste of blood and organs." (in reference to the Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy)
  • "He is in no way implicated in the Cash-for-Honours scandal." (in reference to the Cash-for-Honours scandal)
  • "If he'd been the video ref (referee) for the World Cup of Rugby final he would've seen that of course it was a try you blind Australian half-wit." (in reference to the 2007 Rugby World Cup final in which England's Mark Cueto appeared to score a try which was ruled out by the referee, an Australian by the name of Stuart Dickinson)

Other characteristics

In the Stig's debut, he was described by Clarkson as having a very small brain, worthless opinions, and a disorder called "Mansell Syndrome". He has been depicted as a piece of cargo, being collected by Clarkson from the baggage conveyor at the airport;

  • Progressive rock
  • Whale sounds
  • Baroque music
  • Advertising jingles
  • Foreign language learning tapes
  • Romantic audio novels
  • Salesman techniques
  • ABBA (in French and Spanish)
  • Elton John
  • Bee Gees (including, in one episode, the Bee Gees in German)
  • The Bangles (in German)
  • Speeches of Margaret Thatcher
  • Self-help tapes
  • Pipe band music
  • Chas & Dave
  • Vuvuzelas
  • National anthems
  • The Archers
  • Tuvan throat singing
  • The Carpenters

In 2008, the Stig appeared at the National Television Awards, where he silently accepted an award and handed award presenter Griff Rhys Jones a letter from the Top Gear hosts, which instructed Jones to give the Stig the award in his left hand, as his right one is magnetic, and cautioning organisers that he wasn't to be seated near the cast of Coronation Street, as "he's decided all northerners are edible".

Role

In the Top Gear end credits, the Stig is credited alongside Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May as a presenter. The Stig's primary role on the show is at the Top Gear test track at the show's base at Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surrey. His two main functions are to post lap times for featured performance cars in the "Power Laps" segment, and to train celebrity guests to set lap times in the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment, although Chris Harris later took on the instructional role.

The Top Gear website describes the Stig's test-driving role as follows:

When first introduced, the Stig was described as the resident test driver, as the presenters could not consistently post fast times themselves. His stated mission was to "just go out there and drive fast".

McCarthy was cast as the Stig following a chance meeting with Jeremy Clarkson at the 2002 launch party for McCarthy's autobiography, Flat Out, Flat Broke: Formula 1 the Hard Way!. This led to an audition as a regular presenter, before the production team decided the racing driver would be anonymous. The newspaper quoted a show insider as saying, "Just a handful of the crew know that he is actually Perry." McCarthy responded at the time, "I do know who the Stig is but I cannot comment any further." According to McCarthy, "We tried to make it as much like a scene out of James Bond as possible."

Although McCarthy said in 2006 that, following his exit from Top Gear, he harboured ambitions of re-entering racing in the Grand Prix Masters series, he went on to run an investment company and appear as an after-dinner speaker. jumping a snowmobile off a ski-jump in Lillehammer, Norway;

In January 2009, rumours about the Stig's identity were stoked, in part by a News of the World article alleging to have discovered the Stig to be a married man in his 30s, living in a £300,000 home and driving a £15,000 car, on an income of around £150,000 from his Top Gear job and some stunt and test driving. In the same month, an art gallery owner reported that the Stig had revealed his identity to the gallery owner and his son, after contracting with them (under the guise of a BBC executive) for a series of signed and limited prints of the Stig. In the latter instance, the Stig was alleged to be Ben Collins. It was also reported that a builder doing work at Collins's home had found the Stig's trademark suit and gloves on display there.

When Richard Hammond crashed a jet-powered car, the accident report into the crash described Ben Collins as someone "who worked closely with Top Gear as a high performance driver and consultant".

Michael Schumacher

On 20 June 2009, Clarkson announced in his newspaper column that the Stig would show his face in Top Gears series thirteen premiere, airing the next day. According to Clarkson, the Stig was "fed up with newspapers speculating that he's a photocopier salesman from Bolton, or lives in a pebble-dashed house in Bristol". In the subsequent interview, Schumacher exhibited some of the Stig's supposedly defining character traits, such as knowing only two facts about ducks (both "facts" being wrong).

On 23 August 2010, the BBC and the Stig's publisher, HarperCollins, appeared in court. HarperCollins confirmed that it was being sued by the BBC over the autobiography's publication, stating, "We are disappointed that the BBC has chosen to spend licence fee payers' money to suppress this book and will vigorously defend the perfectly legitimate right of this individual to tell his story."

On 29 August, the Daily Mirror claimed that photos of Collins at his England home on the same day that the Stig had appeared at a Top Gear event in Germany proved that Collins had already been fired from the Stig role. When asked about the ongoing High Court action, Collins stated, "I am not allowed to talk about it."

On 1 September 2010, the case was decided against the BBC, as the High Court refused to grant an injunction blocking the publication of the autobiography now acknowledged to be authored by Collins. Collins was in court for part of that day's hearing, but neither he nor the BBC confirmed afterward that he was the Stig; a BBC spokesman said, "The BBC brought this action as we believe it is vital to protect the character of The Stig, which ultimately belongs to the licence-fee payer. Today's judgment does not prevent the BBC from pursuing this matter to trial and it will not be deterred from protecting such information from attack no matter when or by whom it should arise." On 3 September 2010, the BBC News website published a profile of Collins that began: "Former Formula Three driver Ben Collins has won a legal fight to publish an autobiography in which he claims to be The Stig."

Collins's book, The Man in the White Suit, was published on 16 September 2010.

Aftermath

Immediately following the High Court's decision, Top Gear presenter James May commented, "Obviously I'm now going to have to take some legal action of my own, because I have been the Stig for the past seven years, and I don't know who this bloke is, who's mincing around in the High Court pretending it's him."

Speculation about the future of the Stig character began immediately. On 3 September 2010, May told a radio show that the Stig would be "dealt with" in a similar manner to how the Black Stig was eliminated. On the same day, The Telegraph reported that the BBC would not be renewing Collins's contract and that Collins would be soliciting offers to star in his own programme. (A month later, he joined the show Fifth Gear for its eighteenth series; he then became a co-presenter on the Polish programme Automaniak.) Clarkson advertised for a new driver in his 4 September newspaper column, noting the successful applicant must know that "no one, under any circumstances, should ever rat on their friends". In a 7 September interview, Clarkson said that Collins was "history as far as we are concerned. He's sacked."

Bookmakers' favourites to become the new Stig included Anthony Davidson, Damon Hill, Russ Swift, Heikki Kovalainen, and an unspecified female driver.

On 1 October 2010, it was announced that Collins would join Five's Fifth Gear motoring show, where he was introduced by Vicki Butler-Henderson as someone whose name "rhymes with The Twig". Collins appeared unmasked, saying "Yes, I can speak. It's a massive pleasure to do so."

On 5 November 2010, the Top Gear website released a video clip about its "Stig Farm", the end of which introduced a new Stig for the travelling stage show Top Gear Live. The video also featured a Stig attempting to write a book on a computer, and correcting one of its many mistakes with Tippex.

In the "USA Road Trip" special (debuting 21 December 2010), the presenters branded the Stig a traitor; May declared his true name to be Judas Iscariot. In a challenge mimicking a drive-by shooting, the targets used were cardboard representations of the Stig (with Hammond taking special care to shoot the Stig in the back).

During Collins's appearance with a military amputees rally team, broadcast in July 2011, he was introduced by Hammond as "romantic novelist and ex-Stig, Ben Collins". Collins returned to Top Gear in the series 18 special "50 Years of Bond Cars", where Hammond interviewed him on his work as a stunt driver in the film Skyfall. Hammond again introduced him as an ex-Stig and referred several times during the interview to Collins's departure. Collins wore a T-shirt during the interview which read "I am the Stig."

Second White Stig