Top Gear’s Stig to make book drive in Poland

After over eight years of appearing anonymously to test cars featured in Top Gear - which has become the BBC’s biggest grossing export and is screened to large audiences in Poland - racing driver Ben Collins came out from behind his blacked-out helmet to reveal that he was indeed the Stig.

Collins has also appeared as a stunt driver in movies such as James Bond’s Quantum of Solace and will be appearing at bookshops and in media promoting his new book.

The Top Gear programme, has been accused been accused by many of using tired old stereotypes as being the basis for much of its humour and Poland has complained before about its often tasteless antics.

In 2009, the Polish Embassy in London complained to the BBC after one episode which featured presenter Jeremy Clarkson reading out a mock advert for the VW Scirocco, which said, "Berlin to Warsaw in one tank", referring to Nazi German’s invasion of Poland at the beginning of WW II.

"We understand that Mr Clarkson often jokes about various European nations, about Germans or the French. But we believe that a joke about the Nazi German invasion of Poland is not a proper way to make people laugh," said the statement.

"We think the tragedy of the situation - the outbreak of World War II - should not be the butt of jokes," Embassy spokesman Robert Szaniawski added. (pg)