BBC to air Jeremy Clarkson’s final Top Gear scenes

Unused footage of Jeremy Clarkson taken during his last days at the helm of Top Gear will be screened later this year, the BBC has said.

Kim Shillinglaw, controller of BBC Two and BBC Four, said the footage, though incomplete, is likely to air this summer.

She said: “No way would I want the available material not to be seen by viewers”.

The BBC dropped Clarkson in March following a fracas with Oisin Tymon.

The decision caused an outpouring of support from Top Gear fans, with more than a million people signing an online petition to reinstate him.

‘Open book’

The row, which took place in a North Yorkshire hotel, was said to have occurred because no hot food was provided following a day’s filming.

After an internal investigation in March, BBC director general Tony Hall confirmed Clarkson’s contract would not be renewed.

Shillinglaw said it was an “open book” on who might replace the 55-year-old, following rumours that it could be a woman.

She said: “We’ll definitely look at some women but it’s not a driving priority”.

In his latest Sunday Times column, Clarkson revealed that he thought he probably had cancer at the time he hit Top Gear producer Tymon.

He said the incident came on his “most stressful day… in 27 years at the BBC” – but that other people facing stress “manage to cope better than I did”.

Bookies’ favourite

Sue Perkins, the host of BBC One’s The Great British Bake Off, was named the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Clarkson a fortnight ago.

Bookmakers Coral said she was the front-runner for the job, followed by Dermot O’Leary and then Jodie Kidd.

The news prompted a barrage of abusive tweets for Perkins, whose Twitter timeline was filled with “blokes wishing me dead”, including threats from someone who “suggested they’d like to see me burn to death”.

She later quit Twitter, leading Clarkson’s co-presenter James May to suggest those who sent the abusive tweets should “do the world a much bigger favour by killing yourself”.

“Obviously I don’t actually want people to kill themselves but, really, we don’t want them as fans,” May added.

BBC