A Nadir

At work I watch stuff I wouldn't normally bother with at home. Sometimes I enjoy it, at other times I understand why I don't watch it.

Top Gear is one such programme that belongs in the latter category.

Years ago I enjoyed it. You'd get to see the latest models produced by the car makers and the presenters would guide you around the vehicle and take it on a test run. All stuff designed to appeal to men.

It is still designed to appeal to males. But oh, what a difference.

Whereas thirty years ago to be a man was to be adult in a masculine kind of way now it seems to be the fashion for men to behave like grown up toddlers...................well OK, adolescents.

The three presenters prat about with huge budgets doing stuff that an adult male of thirty years ago would have gawped at in amazement. Not because it is amazing but because of the sheer childishness - in my view- of the antics. It isn't really about cars. It's a about a trio of daft men doing daft things and spending an enormous amount of money doing it.

They remind me of Bill and Ben with Little Weed and talk in a parody of 'Commentator Speak'. Basically this means no more than three or maybe four words at a time, all with individual emphasis and then a pause with the last word of each sentence lengthened for no other reason than to prolongue the programme it seems.

Imagine talking like that at breakfast, "Darling, would you like.............pause for effect..........some toast and...................pause for effect....................maaaaarmalade".

Fucking irritating. I find the programme pointless and boring. Yet my young colleagues love it. What is it with men of today?

A programme designed for men in the past would present men in what would be termed a manly or masculine way.

'Manly' - now there's a word. Even as I typed it I almost cringed at such an anachronistic term. Even masculine is avoided. It's as though men are afraid to flaunt their sexuality for fear of being seen as old fashioned.

For fear of being seen as a threat to the fashionable feminine opposite sex?

So what do men do? They stay in their adolescence. They don't become men. And some men even revert back into adolescence. For that is what Top Gear has become. A programme for grown ups with the mentality of teenagers.

Even the term 'man' or 'men' is used less now and replaced by the less manly 'lad' or 'lads'. Men have become accustomed to behave like adolescents long after their hormones have settled down.

And now we have middle aged men doing it too; like Jeremy Clarkson.

I wonder if there is an irony in this somewhere. In our modern world where women can challenge men in ways they could never do in the past is this refusal to grow up and in some cases an actual retreat back into 'laddishness', the ultimate rebellion for the misogynists. A sort of 'Fuck you' to women?

Is it misogyny wearing a disguise?