What a classy guy Collins is
The Stig: Ben Collins was dropped from the show after it emerged he was to publish his autobiography. Photograph: Todd Antony/BBC Richard Desmond’s Channel 5 has hired Ben Collins, the racing driver who played Top Gear’s the Stig, to appear in rival motoring show Fifth Gear.
Collins, who appeared as the helmet-wearing “mystery” driver on BBC2’s Top Gear from 2003, was ditched from the show after it emerged he was preparing to publish a book on his racing experiences and unmask himself as the Stig. Last month the BBC failed to win an injunction to halt the publication of Collins’s autobiography.
He will make his debut on the show, which also features former Top Gear presenters Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson, when the new series of Fifth Gear starts next Friday night.
Collins will take on “Stig-like” roles, in a “colourful racing suit”, and also appear as a co-presenter minus racing garb. However, he will not wear the trademark all-white racing outfit and helmet synonymous with the Stig role on Top Gear because the BBC holds the rights to that image.
“I’m delighted to be joining the Fifth Gear team,” said Collins. “And I am looking forward to a new set of exciting challenges, apparently with and without the helmet.”
Steve Gowans, the Channel 5 head of factual entertainment, added: “We’re delighted to have the Ben on board – it will be fascinating to see how he does in a head-to-head with Tiff and Jason [Plato] – the best drivers on TV.”
Collins will appear in at least five of the episodes of the new series. Fifth Gear is a co-production between Channel 5 and Discovery.
The BBC’s court proceedings against Collins, and the media interest that surrounded it, bordered on farcical at times, not least because the Stig’s identity had already been revealed. Collins, from Bristol, was identified as the Stig by the Sunday Times in August, and photos of the driver have subsequently appeared in the press.
However, the BBC repeatedly refused to confirm that Collins plays the character, as it sought to protect the commercial value of one of its hit shows.
Andy Wilman, the Top Gear executive producer, angrily dismissed the publisher of Collins’s book, HarperCollins, as “a bunch of chancers” and insisted that the Stig was effectively the property of the men who invented him.