The Stig Revealed
January 21st, 2009by Jeremy Thomas
Top Gear is one of my favorite shows on TV. On it they closely guard the identity of “the Stig” – the man in the white suite who test drives all of the cars they feature around their track. Today’s issue of The Telegraph has revealed the Stig is a man called “Collins” (they don’t reveal his first name). According to The Telegraph
The 33-year-old let his secret slip when he asked [staff at a Bristol gallery] to help him produce a limited-edition print of The Stig in action…Collins, from Bristol, has always denied being The Stig and could face the sack if he admitted it. The first Stig, stunt driver Perry McCarthy, lost the job after outing himself in his book Flat Out, Flat Broke, published in 2002…The identity of White Stig has not been officially revealed and is regarded as a carefully guarded secret by the BBC.
The Telegraph also cites a youtube video where the Stig speaks with a Bristol accent (dialect of UK English). Collins is from that area. And autotrader.co.uk also has an editorial where they claimed to have unmasked the Stig (picture below), in which a flash of light reveals man with blue eyes behind an otherwise blackened visor. Collins has blue eyes.
I think they’ve got him (thank you Jauder Ho for alerting me to this).
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January 21st, 2009 at 9:30 am
Just caught up on all the recent episodes thanks to BBC America OnDemand (not sure about how to space that). Love the show! My favorite bit was the super-car race to see how far each car would get on one gallon of gas.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:17 am
Yep, that one’s fantastic. I liked the episode where a high-end BMW paced a Toyota Prius around the track for 10 laps. The Prius driver was told to go all out, while the BMW driver was told simply to keep up.
The Prius ended up doing just over 17 MPG, while the BMW did just over 19. It’s all about how you drive the car they said.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I’m not so sure the Stig is this “Collins” person, I’m still putting my money on Margaret Thatcher. Have you ever seen her and the Stig in the room at the same time?
January 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I don’t care who the guy is, I want his job!
Was surprised about the Bugatti run on Monday nights ep. didn’t think it would be that much slower round the track given it’s insane acceleration…
January 6th, 2010 at 5:40 am
the stig is the enigma of the show, u dont know who he/she is and will never know.
i get a kick out of the episode where they are in america and jeremy and richard set off the security alarms of parked SUV’s with powerful revving of their v8 engines then dash off with squealing tires only to be pulled over by a cop.