Miguel Sanchez

I actually got to do one of these for the first time today. Three laps of the Nurburgring which I went into with no practice or clue about strategy (I made the wrong choice). I've driven this track in games where the conditions change but there was something different about it today, going from this: to this: I'm reminded of the Top Gear episode where they did a 24 hour race at Silverstone and Hammond said something like "you just have to sort of aim at corners and hope they're still there." Hopefully when I get back up to speed and after they sort their shit out I can go back to feeling less horribly out of my depth in these online races. Maybe I'll win the lottery and get to do them on a PS5 and with a wheel with proper feedback. In the meantime there are several races over the next week or so. Go into the Championship Races in the Sport Mode menu and have a look around.

Jeremy is explaining the differences in the Porsche sports car range by likening them to bikini-clad women in the studio, based on the size of their breasts.

The national anthem of an independent Scotland should be Scottish Winds by Frightened Rabbit.

Series 2 Episode 5: "Which takes longer to change, a gearbox or a woman?"

Twilight Sad at the Barras tomorrow. I've not been to a gig since December, are places still being arsey about masks and vaccine passports? Ed - not vaccine passports, track and trace or whatever this shite is now

This is obviously terrible but it somehow doesn't sound like something unique, or completely derisive. I like this bit from the Wikipedia page: In a commentary for Dummy, Steph Kretowicz praised My Teenage Dream Ended for "its realistic portrayal of a mind mashed by mass media" I think... I think I agree with the praise???

Jeremy is driving the new Jaguar XJR through the Lake District while listening to Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy and eating an array of chocolate bars (including Fuse, which you don't get anymore). He has driven past Glasgow and the background music has added a fiddle.

Series 2 Episode 4: Boris Johnson is the SIARPC. He looks exactly the same as he does now, except slightly less fat. His suit has a big stain on the shoulder. He's done a Greek mythology reference. Jeremy is reading out a review he wrote about a Maserati and he's just an absolute fucking moron.

I took him out this year because it was apparently going much better than anyone could have hoped for. Good move.

In a word - Embarrassing

Family heirloom, perhaps.

I tip the barber because I get my hair cut once a year and do it as a courtesy thank you for not having stuck his scissors in my neck dealing with it. On the rare occasion I'd use a taxi I wouldn't be going far and would round it up to something convenient for me to carry. I'd empty my bins myself before I thought of tipping the binmen. I'd do a better job.

I thought I'd posted this somewhere in the thread but here's an interview and track by track rundown of Dance Music by Mastersystem: Track-by-Track Guide: Mastersystem - Dance Music - GoldFlakePaint SH: I am writing this from a bed with the curtains drawn on the sunniest day in Glasgow for quite some time. It’s so easy to slip into this mode, I love it and I hate it. I’m prone to depression. It’s not something I try to hide anymore, but being open about it doesn’t mean I don’t continue to have days where the idea of going outside borders on terrifying. I sometimes feel I could stay like this for weeks if I didn’t have shit to do. I think of Brian Wilson in his beddy days and feel envy. It’s no way to live though. I will probably head out after I’ve done this, honest. Might just watch one more episode of The Bridge.

I agree with this.

Series 2 Episode 2: Jeremy did the "put a picture really high up on the Cool Wall so Hammond couldn't reach it" thing for the first time. Rimmer from Red Dwarf is extolling the virtues of the Jaguar E-Type. James said he wouldn't buy the new Rolls Royce because he looks at the lady on the bonnet and thinks of Jimmy Savile, a reference which probably means something different now compared to 2003.

Week 13 update Nothing this week but I could have sworn someone picked Madeline Albright. Since there's a much more appropriate (and supermik-free) Taylor Hawkins thread elsewhere, let's learn about the first woman to be American Secretary of State: Let’s remember Madeleine Albright for who she really was | Opinions | Al Jazeera Also showing up when you google her name is this: An Ode to Madeleine Albright's Best Brooches (townandcountrymag.com) yass, queen!

I'm not a massive fan, but this is my favourite song of theirs that he's on:

Jeremy called Churchill "a drunken Kurd murderer" because he beat Brunel to the title of the greatest Briton ever: 100 Greatest Britons - Wikipedia Murray Walker is driving and reviewing a McLaren F1.

Series 2 Episode 1: Jason has lost a lot of weight and they're calling him James. And he needs a haircut. The Cool Wall really is the best thing that Top Gear ever did. Hammond is listening his top five most hated cars ever and the Peel P50 is at number 4 and Jeremy is having a giggle about it.

Series 1 Episode 10: The Bugatti Veyron has appeared in The News. The pictures look like the real car. 1000 horsepower is preposterous. Also the first mention from Jeremy of dried-on Weetabix, which the new RX-8's brakes will be made of.

Darts would be much less entertaining if the board was 50 metres away from the oche.

The extent people go to with the legal action and review bombing on metacritic is about as pointlessly hysterical as it gets, but you can't argue that it didn't work and didn't provide something genuinely necessary in this case. GT Sport was different from previous Gran Turismos because of the Sport Mode from the title, the matchmaking based online system of regular races against human opponents, rather than the traditional single player format. The game didn't have much single player content at launch, and when standard events were added these often paid out much higher sums than Sport Mode, which was intended to be the main point of the game. You could do a Gr.1 race at Monza against the AI in under 10 minutes and earn I think at least 200k. I think the most I ever saw anyone win from a Sport Mode race was one of the longer FIA races (themselves a rarity) which was about 38-40 minutes depending on what rank you were at, which got you just over 100k for the win. That was the same no matter what rank you were - you could be top split and beat the other 19 best drivers in your region and get the same as someone winning a race full of people playing for the first time. Both of which would still have been worth a lot less than a glorified sightseeing tour against the AI. GT Sport's beta came out in I think October 2017. They maintained and worked on that for a long time, and learned absolutely no lessons at all from it in terms of the economy. Sport Mode itself barely even works, and it doesn't work cross-platform which wasn't and mentioned anywhere in-game or on the website (this is a much bigger problem imo than anything else people have been complaining about). These things should have been worked out before the game launched and at least a clear plan communicated to players - which would have included people who literally spent years of their lives playing GT Sport and benefitting GT, PlayStation and Sony by competing in live events, all the way down to some of the more casual people new or returning to the series - but it wasn't, and instead after two weeks we got a game with microtransactions and artificial scarcity nerfing its already meagre credit payouts. I've been much more sanguine about the state of the game as-is than a lot of people (and believe me, I've had much longer internet posts than this with people I know better and who know the game better than people here) but this news is absolutely essential, and it's something I doubt would have happened so suddenly or comprehensively if there wasn't as much of a fuss made as there has been. I knew that GT7 at launch wouldn't be GT7 in a year's time, and I could accept that, but there's no excuse for PD being as withdrawn and uncommunicative as they are. The world is a different place and has different expectations than when previous games launched. That said, I'm honestly most thrilled about this part: - Addition of high rewards for clearing the Circuit Experience in all Gold/All Bronze results. - Increase of rewards in Online Races. If you want to learn to drive, do the Circuit Experiences. If you want to really learn to drive, play online.

Deeply tedious hardcore fans and somehow even more irritating casual hangers-on who only pop up when there's a big event

Series 1 Episode 9: Gordon Ramsay is the SIARPC, Jeremy is giving him shit saying Ainsley Harriott is a better celebrity chef.

Someone's stolen our idea and has already gained 300k followers from it, somehow: Chaotic Nightclub Photos (@ClubPhotos_) / Twitter