About a month ago we blogged about the SNS’s (Scottish Newspaper Society) complaints against the BBC and one of those complaints, at that time,  had to do with the BBC not using its funds appropriately — so says the SNS.  (The BBC is a publicly funded initiative, originally created to to supplement news content that the commercial news groups could not provide).  Nonetheless, we, for the first time see some legitimacy in the SNS remarks.  It turns out that the BBC  has spent an incredible amount of time in legal battles with HarperCollins, as the publisher wants to release a book disclosing the identity of “The Stig”, a secretive test driver on the hugely popular BBC show TopGear.

From the BBC’s perspective, releasing the identity will take away from the very fundamentals of the TopGear show, as the enigma of  ’The Stig’ is now an integral part of the shows success.  Unfortunately for the BBC however, there is this little thing called ‘free speech’ and if ‘The Stig’ wants to release his identity, ‘The Stig’ can.

It boggles my mind why the BBC would not have made keeping the identity of ‘The Stig’ confidential, a clause in the drivers contract.  Wouldn’t that have made things a lot easier.

Oh, and by the way, ‘The Stig’s’ real name is Ben Collins.