Top Gear: The best facts about The Stig, Ever!

Vanja K.
Vanja K.
April 3, 2009
o o o
Fun Stuff
Top Gear: The best facts about The Stig, Ever!

The Stig is the name given to the anonymous racing driver on the BBC show Top Gear. In the show he is cast as a mysterious “tame racing driver” whose identity is unknown, and who never speaks or removes his helmet on camera. Nonetheless he is fully credited as a presenter, albeit as “The Stig”, alongside Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

The Stig’s primary functions on the show are to post lap times in various cars around the Top Gear Test Track in Dunsfold Park, and to train each week’s guest in setting a lap time in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car feature on the show. In addition the Stig carries out other driving duties when the need arises. The Stig’s name derives from presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s days at Repton School; where, according to Clarkson, new students were always called “Stig”. A proposed name for the Stig was originally “The Gimp” until protests from Perry McCarthy put a stop to the idea. There have been two official Stigs on the show, while various other Stigs have made cameo appearances for particular episodes. The Stig has also appeared on some of Jeremy Clarkson’s motoring specials, such as Heaven and Hell and Thriller.

The Stig’s true identity is never revealed on the show, and in order to maintain the secrecy, all shots show him wearing full racing overalls and matching Simpson Diamondback helmet. All that can be seen from the gap between his helmet and jumpsuit is that he is a white male with dark hair. It is also known that he wears Size 10 racing boots as discovered by the Sunday Times and a well-timed camera flash managed to show The Stig’s eyes by Auto Trader. Although The Stig does talk with celebrities while preparing them for their “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” lap times, he is almost never shown talking on screen, and in both the programme and Top Gear magazine articles he is portrayed as unable or unwilling to talk.

Clarkson has written that The Stig is not permitted to talk on screen because “any opinion he might voice on cars would be rubbish”, though he has been caught speaking on camera. It has been said by Clarkson that The Stig’s personal car is an Hyundai i10 which is his fauvorite car (nothing to this relevance has ever been proven) and we can see him listening various music while his driving. These have included power ballads, one-hit wonders, easy listening, country and western, progressive rock, baroque, advertising jingles, foreign language tapes, romantic novels, salesman techniques, the hits of Elton John, the speeches of Margaret Thatcher, self-help tapes, and Morse Code.

Now that we are familliar with The Stig, let’s get back on the main topic for this article, the facts about The Stig. Well he is referred by Clarkson in several ways, but the most interesting one is started with “Some say …” which is almost all the time an intro to a car test at the Top Gear track.

Here is the (funny) list of the Top Gear facts about The Stig, and Some say …

He’s banned from the city of Chichester.
He is allergic to the Dutch.
He never blinks.
He eats brake pads for breakfast.
He drinks Shell biofuel for breakfast.
He is wanted by the CIA.
His urine is used to power Diesel engines.
He is probably Arceus/Jesus.
He only knows two facts about ducks. And both of them are wrong.
He sleeps upside down like a bat.
He is worshipped as a God in Papua New Guinea
He appears on high value stamps in Sweden.
He can catch fish with his tongue.
His testicles are made out of steel
His breath smells of magnesium.
He is scared of bells.
He naturally faces magnetic north.
His nipples are as big as Music CDs
If he went on Celebrity Love Island, they’d all be pregnant, including the cameramen.
He has hydraulic legs.
He was brought up in Africa by a herd of Cheetahs.
He deliberately sabotaged Richard Hammond’s dragster-stunt
He names all his potted plants Steve.
His sweat can be used to clean precious metals.
He is actually a she.
His heart ticks like a watch.
His power level…it’s….OVER 9,000!
He is confused by stairs.
His voice can only be heard by cats.
He was born on Mars
Gravity obeys him
He pees 98RON petrol, and is considered more valuable than platinum.
He has named every blade of grass around the Top Gear test track.
He can see oxygen.
He can drive a car backwards with his leg hair.
He has a plasticine model of James May in his garden shed for inspiration.
He was turned down to go on I’m a Celebrity, because people had heard of him.
He does not have a driving license.
He is Matthew Bellamy of Muse
He can smell corners, hear oil pressure, and see slipstreams
He has two sets of knees.
His farts consist of pure nitrous oxide
He can taste the mileage of anything
He is actually from Bristol and speaks with a heavy West Country accent
His voice is the sound of newborn babies crying.
His finger prints are exactly the same as the tread on Pirelli P-zero tyres, and if you were to stand on corner 38 of the Nurburgring on a Wednesday evening – you can hear his mating call.
His tears are Adhesive.
He’ll survive the nuclear war, and he will rule the world with the cockroaches.
He is the long lost Transformer son of Optimus Prime, and that he transforms into a Fiat Panda when no-one’s looking.
The outline of his left nipple is exactly the same shape as the Nürburgring.
His ears are on back to front, and when he goes to the toilet he excretes petrol.
… Nothing! They are too affaid of him to say anything at all.
He quit binge drinking, once the price per litre went over £1.
The Stig has been found out to have been in the Max Mosely video
He was born in space.
He forages for wolves at night.
He sleeps upside down like a bat.
His skin has the texture of dolphins.
If you tune your radio to 88.4 FM you can actually hear his thoughts.
He does not see like humans do, instead he sees numbers in green scrolling down (a reference to the The Matrix).
He once punched a horse to the ground.
His politics are terrifying.
He lives in a tree.
He was raised by wolves.
He appears on high-value stamps in Sweden.
His favourite philosopher is Immanuel Kant.
He has no understanding of clouds.
His earwax tastes like Turkish Delight.
He is confused by stairs.
He naturally faces magnetic north.
He is illegal in 17 U.S. states.
His heart ticks like a watch.
All his legs are hydraulic.
He can “accumbularate”.
He appears on Japanese banknotes.
There’s an airport in Russia named after him.
If set alight, he’d burn for a thousand days.
He is terrified of ducks.
He can swim seven lengths underwater.
He has webbed buttocks.
He can melt concrete on contact.
He is more machine than man.
His heart is in upside down.
His teeth glow in the dark.
His favorite food is raw meat.
He has no age.
He has been transposed into C-Sharp Minor
He cleans windows in aphabetical order
He can be administered intravenously
He no longer growls at the vet during his check-up
On special occasions, devotees drink diesel oil in his honour
Sleeps with a Norwegian accent
Draws nourishment from G-forces
Believes the Michael Shumacher is a bit of a nancy-boy.
He believes the credit crunch is some kind of new breakfast cereal and that he has a tattoo of his face … on his face.

We would like to ask you, our viewers to add any facts you come across down in the comments section, so we can populate the list of facts about this amazing character. We hope you like the list, because we sure had some laughs while compiling it from all of the sources. And we would like to thank Wikipedia.org, FinalGear.com, and some other unrelated sources for this great piece of information. We are sorry if any duplicates can be found, and please send us any info about it.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADA Compliance Services by Nucleus
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Learn more about the ins and outs of the automotive industry, get the most recent aftermarket tuning projects & builds, all the recent product releases and more, delieved to your e-mail thanks to our non-instrusive, pretty awesome, kickass MCP newsletter. Subscribe today!
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Learn more about the ins and outs of the automotive industry, get the most recent aftermarket tuning projects & builds, all the recent product releases and more, delieved to your e-mail thanks to our non-instrusive, pretty awesome, kickass MCP newsletter. Subscribe today!
close