Top Gear Live

So, thanks to Sony PlayStation’s office here in Dublin, I managed to swing some tickets to the big Top Gear Live show in the RDS. My showing was Friday at 3:30PM, where I was seated next to the lads from BurnAllZombies.com.

So, we arrived just as the show began. In fact, when we walked into the arena, the show just kicked into it’s first firey-car pyro-fest featuring a lady dancing with loud, brash guitar music. Then the loud, brash English presenters of BBC 2′s current cash-cow strolled out to have typical banter.

my weekend runabout

This show is not Top Gear. It’s a Live show, so heavily choreographed and scripted, but the presenters come across like they genuinely are having fun. Not sure if the fun remains all the way through to the last show on Sunday. This is the benefit of seeing the Friday show, I suppose! The show is best described as a bit of a circus where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond & James May are the more-than-capable ringmasters, introducing pieces involving loud cars, explosions and perfectly executed stunts by a team of tamed racing drivers.

The first such piece featured four 2010 Ford Focus RS’. Now, the Ford Focus RS is a great car, but these guys managed to drive them like madmen. Remember that Forza 3 trailer where the cars were doing insane stunts inside the engine, tossing, turning and skidding around each other like a well choreographed ballet? That’s what four men did, in front of everyone’s eyes. Not one mis-step in the entire bit was a sight to behold as the cars danced around each other.

The next bit featured the three lads having a race on their economy-inspired vehicles made from household DIY goods. Disembodied flymo’s and drills were assembled into some sort of vehicular contraption to race with. Richard had a harley-style bike, James had a chainsaw-powered cheelchair (that was very quick, and won the race) and Jeremy had an unwieldy hovercraft that was as ludicrous as everything else he makes on the show, where he never even managed to get half way down the track as he spun uncontrollably.

I use this when it's raining

The shows down point was probably the Need for Speed moment, when cars came out to race around a few obstacles (basically a figure 8 ) all painted up with dragons and neon. The “hawt chick” dropped the flag to get the race going before flirting her way off the arena floor, letting the cars drift around the small course. I did see some people get excited by all of this, but most discerning Top Gear fans are probably not going to be huge fans of this bit. The only truly impressive piece here was a small car going up onto a circular platform and spinning around it for a good 2 or 3 minutes.

Interactive pieces were introduced with the Cool Wall, where a few cars were driven out in front of the audience. A virtual cool wall appears on the screens in front of the crowd, where webcams (possibly Sony eyetoys!) detect what the crowd think. This is done using red and green double-sided cards given to each member of the audience at the start of the show (which didn’t happen as lots of us never got these – or more worryingly, ear plugs). Red for cool, green for uncool. Jeremy and Richard were in the audience for this piece, asking quick opinions of fans. Of course, being Ireland, the selection was rather embarrassing at our show. A milk man, builder and Chrysler dealer in the audience didn’t exactly make us look like the land of saints and scholars. In the end it was decided by all that a Range Rover was the coolest car of the evening after listening to the presenters ranting about how it’s terrible, but the car they use day-to-day. Something I didn’t agree with myself.

The second interactive piece was a video game race, where the crowd was split in two, pitting Richard against James. We were “with” James. Using the same cards, we could steer the car. Red for left, green for right. Microphones in the roof would detect how loud the crowd was shouting, giving the car speed. It worked quite well but was clearly scripted to work a bit better then it probably should on the Top Gear test track. The car would turn corners while still facing the opposite direction. Either way, we won. This meant a random person in the audience had his picture taken (not mine, thankfully) to represent the 3:30PM show in Dublin with our time. I don’t remember the time done, but we beat the previous Irish show the night before and the London shows on the lap time board, which will be brought around the world. I’d love to know if we remain on top by the time the show goes to Australia.

I have two of these

Being Top Gear, it would have been awful to not wheel out a million euro worth of cars in front of people. This was a big deal for me, as I’m a huge fan of the Audi R8, which came out in V10 form. Each car emerged from smoke with dramatic music – which was unfortunate because I would have much preferred hearing the engine revs. Aside from the Audi, two Ferrari’s came out, an Enzo (which I’m not a huge fan of, too ugly!) and a plethora of other high-class high-end cars.

There was a race featuring the three lads and three other drivers in 3-wheeled cars. They wanted to show, scientifically, how to drive costs of motor racing down by removing a wheel from each car. Enter the tri-wheeled car race. A simple circle with each car painted with the flag of random countries like Paraguay. The race was hard to follow and not that exciting, save for the fact that the cars constantly flipped over, making for a funny session.

The absolute highlight had to be the football match. Three vs Three small cars, two goals at either end and a giant football. Any Top Gear fans know the scenario well. Ireland v France, in hilarious fashion. Richard Hammond, having lost the audience race, ended up being France. This gave the referee, Jeremy, plenty of fodder to pander to the crowd with, including the opening goal by Ireland which came from a hand ball – the hand of James May coming out of the window to knock the ball into the goal. Of course, Ireland won 3-2 in an exciting and fun display of automotive silliness.

The show wrapped up with a gameshow hosted by virtual Jimmy Carr called Carmageddon (no, not the old PlayStation game). A bunch of steampunk-style trashcan cars come out and fight (using pyro) the Stig in his little buggie. It’s all a little contrived and ridiculous but the driving stunts were good and well choreographed, again. The show ended with a “big” moment when the stig drove his buggie thing around a loop-de-loop in the arena. Looked good, but probably wasn’t as spectacular as the presenters lead us to believe.

I use this one for shopping

After the show, the arena next to the Simmonscourt area was reserved, filled with area’s where you could sample goods, touch expensive cars and buy swag. The most impressive was the PlayStation area, where fans got a chance to play Gran Turismo 5′s new demo early, not due for another two weeks here.

Elsewhere was an unfortunate combination of a Gillette and Pepsi Max side-by-side area’s. Why was this unfortunate? Because of the abundance of Tierry Henry shilling for their products. Woops. Some free cider, pepsi, yorkie (which is still not for girls) and a newspaper later, we headed off. On the way in/out there was a small area where some large Nissan 4×4′s did some driving up and down ramps, and a row of Mini’s greeted people as they came and went.

A great time was had by all, it seems. Good fun and a big spectacle. Worth the money? For €100 I don’t think I got that much entertainment. It’s not worth half the price of an Electric Picnic ticket. It is, however, great fun, and filled with testosterone and car porn.

And finally, the gallery. I did what I could with the pics, but they were taken on an iPhone!