‘Top Gear’ sprays cars with rainbow colours after shooting segment in Brunei
The BBC Two show features a new line-up including Freddie Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris
By Steve Brown
Top Gear sprays two cars with rainbow colours to show support for the LGBTQ community after shooting a segment in Brunei.
In the tiny southeast Asian kingdom – which follows a strict Sharia penal code – homosexuality is already illegal but back in April it was reported it will become a capital offence when a new law is introduced.
However after international backlash, the Sultan of Brunei revealed they will no longer use the archaic capital punishment for gay sex.
And now, the long-running BBC Two motoring programme – which features a new line-up including Freddie Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris – filmed a segment in Brunei at the end of March before the law was introduced.
In the segment, Flintoff and McGuinness race across Borneo to the palace of the Sultan. However, they learned about the new law after landing back in the UK.
Flintoff told The Guardian: “We would never have filmed in Brunei had the law been announced beforehand.
“Like millions of other people around the world, I utterly condemn Brunei’s actions.
“No one deserves to be stoned to death, whoever they love. Love is love.
“Even though it has since been claimed that the laws will not be enforced, the threat still stands, and even the threat is an appalling abuse of human rights.”
The show considered dropping the segment but instead, they sprayed the cars used in the film in the Pride colours to celebrate and support the LGBTQ community and will display them on air later in the series.
Flintoff continued: “In the last couple of months we have thought very hard about dropping the film entirely, but we shot it before the change in the law, and both the Gurkhas and other Bruneians worked incredibly hard to make it happen.
“We don’t want all their efforts to be for nothing. So, we’ve decided to go ahead and show it [and] we’ve given the cars a little makeover.”
Image: BBC Studios/Jeff Spicer