There is no love lost between Argentina and England on the football pitch or in real life – especially in real life – as “Top Gear” found out last month while filming their Series 22 Christmas Special in the southernmost reaches of Argentina before being forced out by a small, but angry, rock and brick-tossing mob of young adults who, series presenter Jeremy Clarkson maintains, were recruited by local government officials in an effort to give a sensationalistic moment in which they could proclaim that they had tossed out the British in response to lingering anger over the brief 1982 Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas war won by the Brits.
That brief skirmish still has simmering repercussions in Argentina, who still harbor governmental officials who figure they still have a claim to the islands off their coast, so when the “Top Gear” boys showed up for their annual Christmas Special filming and their Porsche 928 was shown to have a license plate reading “H982 FKL” – supposedly a nose-thumbing reference to the 1982 conflict – it set the stage for the angry mob to toss bricks and rocks at their cars and hide in their hotel rooms until they could leave the country.
Clarkson, however, says it was all staged by local Argentine government officials who are still miffed about the conflict and who recruited the angry mob participants to cause the ruckus so they could claim a public and political “victory” over the British by tossing out the automotive show’s presenters and production team.
Series 22 of “Top Gear” is expected to begin airing on BBC America in January 2015.