- Jeremy Clarkson just revealed the identity of the third and final Stig on Top Gear
- There were three different, successive Stigs during the show’s modern run
- The “tame racing driver” was in his late 20s when he started the job, and his name is—
Anyone with nitrous oxide in their blood and a gas tank for a brain likely knows the trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May recently hung up their TV driving gloves after their latest (and last) The Grand Tour special, “One for the Road” on Amazon Prime. Clarkson held a special screening for the show in a structure that was once The Grand Tour’s travelling tent, now located near his newest enterprise, a pub called The Farmer’s Dog.
After the event, Clarkson held a Q&A session in which he took questions from the assembled lot of gearheads. Amongst other topics, he talked about The Stig, the white-race-suit character on Clarkson’s former program, Top Gear, who was responsible for laying down blistering lap times, but whose identity was intentionally kept secret as part of a running gag. Clarkson let loose that the final Stig he worked with over on Top Gear was – drumroll – renowned British race-car driver Phil Keen.
Most fans know there were at least three Stigs during the show’s run. The first was Perry McCarthy, an accomplished racing driver whose particular persona – he preferred a black driving suit – was “killed off” after two seasons of the show, once his identity was outed by U.K. tabloids. Paps strike again.
The second Stig, one Ben Collins, stuck around for a much longer time, but was ousted in 2010 after blowing his own cover because he selfishly wanted to cash in (think books, endorsements, and the like) on the fame, despite knowing full well what he signed up for in becoming The Stig. After ruining the mystique in favour of personal gain, Collins took on a variety of other wheelman roles.
Now, thanks to this Q&A session, we know the third and final Stig on Top Gear was a British GT Championship driver named Phil Keen. This racing professional has a long resumé of success, including a couple of dozen wins in that notoriously difficult series, along with a raft of stunt driving. He was also an official Lamborghini factory driver about five years ago, when he won the GT World Challenge Europe Pro-Am title. According to information available online, Keen would have been in his late 20s when starting work as The Stig.
First we had to deal with saying good-bye to seeing the trio of Clarkson, Hammond, and May on-screen together, and now a little more mystery has left our world with this secret being letting out of the bag.
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