The Stig – revealed!
January 12, 2009 by David Twomey
The world’s best kept secret is apparently out. Some say that his tears are adhesive and if he caught fire he would burn for 1000 days. All we know is he is called The Stig.
But you’ll have to put on your detective caps and piece the clues together to figure out the name of television’s biggest mystery.
Infamous tabloid News of the World has apparently ‘unmasked’ The Stig, the helmeted enigmatic character who drives everything from trucks to reasonably priced cars, usually at record speeds, on BBC’s Top Gear.
Some say his skin is the texture of a dolphin’s and that he has his own satellites. However in unexpected form, NOTW isn’t about to crush everyone’s dreams and is keeping the true identity of the white-clad speed demon under wraps.
What the newspaper has published is: “He learnt his trade in Formula First, GT Racing and Stock Cars and almost made the grade as a Formula One driver despite his first track outing as a youngster being “terrifying”. Now in his 30s, he earns around $325,000 a year combining his TGUK job and some stunt and test driving. He is married, lives in a $650,000 home and drives a $32,000 car!”
NOTW has published a mock-up picture on its website revealing The Stig’s eyes behind that famous helmet, but that is as far as they will go.
Despite claiming a senior BBC source has confirmed the newspaper’s suspicions; the newspaper has “no intention of wrecking the great mystery for Top Gear’s millions of fans”.
So we are all left wondering.
Print it: 
I am the stig.
I always hated the some say… things because they started going a bit too far a while back (and the Australian ones were just terrible, the audience didn’t even laugh) and of course he would be unmasked eventually. Even if this isn’t it, it will come and Top Gear will look stupid because of all the hype. It would kind of ruin what is arguably the motoring world’s biggest icon if the general public found out.
There has been more than one Stig to date, actually I think this is the third one.
Yeh, the second one the Black stig (he was dressed in black…) drove off an aircraft carrier. And this current stig has many cousins, some as truck drivers, some live in America and Africa just to name a few places and range in difference sizes and girths and are the ultimate drivers in their fields. The Stigs are a family of high achievers and i would hate to see this family exposed.
looks like jason plato
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had multiple stigs for each episode.
CA what is going on. This story was broken on news dot com dot au much before you brought it on here. I thought you would have been first with the news. Keep up lads!
The Stig varies according to who they can get. Ben Collins was one once, not sure if he still is.
Apparently Ben was named the the Health & Safety Executive report in the crash investigation that nearly killed the Hamster. He was present on the day of the accident and was the only person that fitted the stig profile.
Well apparently the stig’s first name is 4 letters long and the last name is 8 letters long
would generally be of british nationality you would think
i also thought it was jason plato but he’s like in his 40s now
Some say the mystery is revealed, and then it isn’t.
Perry Mcarthy was black stig, I think most know that.
I have read Ben Collins, Julian Bailey & Tim Schrick associated with role and lately information points to ben. There appear to be a lot of mystery perpetrators anyway.
Keep everyone guessing I say.
If he wasn’t now 62 years old the obvious and yet overlooked candidate would be swedish born rally and quattro ace Stig Blomqvist if not by name only.
According to the episode where Top Gear “Stick it up Gerry” the Stig is James May, but how does he get all of his hair under the helmet?
Before everyone jumps on this I am making a joke.
I would love to see a Stig family photo. Maybe TG should arrange a reunion of all the Stigs. Get them together for a BBQ.
For those who appear unaware and thought it might be Jason Plato, he actually works on another show called 5th Gear in the UK. I guess in some way it is a rival show to Top Gear.
In the recent episode where singer Jay Kay was in the resonably priced car, Jeremy referred to the ‘old Stig’ and ‘new Stig’, as Jay Kay had been on the show before. I wouldn’t be suprised, as someone here said, that there are ‘multiple Stig’s’ at any one time.
f1worldchamp Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 10:00 am
In the recent episode where singer Jay Kay was in the resonably priced car, Jeremy referred to the ‘old Stig’ and ‘new Stig’, as Jay Kay had been on the show before. I wouldn’t be suprised, as someone here said, that there are ‘multiple Stig’s’ at any one time.
The Old stig was the black stig (Perry Mcarthy) that got fired because of his auto-biography mentioning that he was the stig in TGUK season 1.
The new stig is as we know it. It’s not always the same person, some are the actual car manufacturer’s test driver, some (like the time when the stig drove a Renault F1) was an actual F1 driver. But apparently, most of the lap times was done by Ben Collins. But there’s no way to confirm that.
u got me :’(
now i have to find a new job :’(
5th Gear came about when the original Top Gear was cancelled around 1999. Some of the presenters of Top Gear, Quentin Willson, Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson joined Channel Five (UK) and started 5th Gear with Jason Plato (BTCC Driver) and Tom Ford (Top Gear Magazine road tester at the time) joining among a few others. Jeremy Clarkson then came up with the new Top Gear concept and sold it to the BBC which is what we see now.
Series 1 and 2 of the new concept had The Stig all in black and was Perry McCarthy. He left the show (obviously as a body double) by driving a Jaguar XJS off the end of an Aircraft Carrier (HMS Invincible). He was sacked because he revealed his identitiy in his autobiography “Flat Out, Flat Broke: Formula 1 The Hard Way” as mentioned above by Ivan. He drove for the Andrea Moda F1 team in 1992 but the cars never qualified. He was also a test driver for Williams and Benetton in the 1990’s. He also raced at Le Mans in 2002. (Source Wikipedia)
The Aussie stig was Warren Luff…..
THe stig = Ben Collins
Old news but just thought I’d confirm LoL
the stig eyes are false, only a stupid could think that it is real