You’ve got to hand it to us Brits haven’t you? We certainly know where our preferences lie and what key issues are the most important in determining the outcome of our lives.

Or whatever makes the trending topics on Twitter. Forget the plight of some Chilean miners stuck down a hole or the flooding in Pakistan.

WE KNOW WHO THE STIG IS, SO WE CAN CROWD AROUND HIM IN SHOPPING CENTRES AND ASK WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DRIVE FAST CARS WHICH GO BRUMMMMMMMMMM BRUMMMMMMMMMM.

The Stig, who’s that then? Petrolheads everywhere bow down to the fourth member of BBC’s Top Gear, as he was the once anonymous character paid to drive cars round a track to unfunny narration from Jeremy Clarkson. Supposedly, the secret of The Stig’s identity was never meant to be revealed, but a court injunction from the High Court has allowed an autobiography to be published by a bloke who drives cars in a mask.

The formula for Top Gear is very basic. It’s presented by ringleader Jeremy Clarkson, with help from James May and Richard Hammond, collectively known as the three musketeers of the mid-life crisis. Each spouting overgrown hair and wearing ill-fitting clothes, the trio shout and emphasise each word as they entice the studio audience into watching the same rehashed footage of cars zooming round a track, cars being slagged off, cars being praised, cars being blown up and cars being priced so highly you’d wish you’d starting saving for one whilst you were in the womb.

So just who is The Stig? Well take a deep breath – he is apparently racing driver Ben Collins. No, us neither. We have no idea who he is and won’t be searching Wikipedia for his tampered biography page. Exciting stuff or what? The Telegraph reports:

“The High Court has refused to ban a book which reveals that Top Gear’s The Stig is racing driver Ben Collins. After more than a day of legal argument in private, Mr Justice Morgan said he would not grant the BBC a temporary injunction blocking publication of Mr Collins’s autobiography.”

But before you start to create an effigy of Ben Collins, it seems that if you used basic detective skills, then the identity of The Stig wasn’t quite as top secret as the secret recipe used by Colonel Sanders in his greasy chicken. Reporting further, The Telegraph says:

“It was widely reported that The Stig was Mr Collins after his company’s financial reports listed Top Gear among its work.”

How will the producers of Top Gear react? Will they bloke up The Stig and nickname him The Stag? Thus widening the appeal to the shows alpha male audience? Or will the simply hire someone else and threaten to attach his testicles to a car battery if identities of future Stigs are breached?

Probably the latter if Jeremy Clarkson gets his way.

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