As I’m sure you’ve guessed from the many, many, MANY posts on the subject - I’m something of a fan of Top Gear.

So with that in mind I’ve tried my best to avoid doing the obvious and posting Top Gear episodes as my iPlayer pick - I usually rate an episode somewhere between eight and ten every week - so it would be easy for me to choose it.

But it would be to pointlessly obvious, you know I like Top Gear, you know where the iPlayer is so it sort of acts as a default Pick without me actually saying it.

However, all that said and done - I am picking Top Gear this week. There are a few reasons for it, one of which is the openly political - stop nannying us rant - straight after a scene involving a hot day, no air con and three middle aged men in a sealed up car. See it for your self HERE.

But also because it is possibly one of the funniest episodes of Top Gear in the last few years. I spent the whole 55 minutes clutching my stomach in pain from laughing so much.

The three brilliantly childish presenters confront the credit crunch, in a way only Top Gear could/would by finding three ’sensibly priced small cars’ and showing them off to bankers - they then paint them, add loud speakers and drive around Parliament Square.

Plus, James meets American stunt driving legend Ken Block, Jeremy tests the mildly insane Mercedes SL Black on the track, and Michael McIntyre is the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.

As a bonus here is a video of Ken Block outside of Top Gear.

When I said Top Gear was a default pick of the week - to be honest - that’s true. My real pick of the week was supposed to be posted last week and was a radio pick. But I was stuck in Bristol and left it to late - the first part expires today.

But just in case you want to look it up on your favourite download service of choice - it was called Voyage and was an alternative history story on the tale of the American Space Programme.

In this alternative world JFK just got injured and we see the programme go on towards a manned mission to Mars in the mid-1980s.

Listen to the remaining parts on the iPlayer.

Giving you the embed is a bit pointless unless you see this before 18:30 tonight (Monday 6 July) but here it is anyway - just in case.

All embed iPlayer code generated using Up Your Ego PIP.

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There are a lot of differences between Bing (Microsoft) and Google maps - I won’t list them all here but lets say Bing has a bit of catching up to do.

But there is one particular difference that annoys me, the others just mildly irritate - they put (U.K.) after Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

OK so you’re probably thinking - but I thought they were in the UK - well if you’re thinking that you’d be wrong.

Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are British Crown Dependencies - not part of the UK, not part of Great Britain, but autonomous juristictions that pass legislation through the Crown.

So seeing (U.K.) under Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man on the Bing Maps was a bit of a red rag and bull scenario.

Normally I would have just let it go though - it didn’t bother me THAT much, or at least not enough to stir me into action.

But, as you probably already know I’m working on an interactive map of my own for the BBC and as the BBC uses Bing Maps, and as my interactive map had Jersey as a focus - I needed to find a solution.

So I did a search for more details on Bing Maps and found a blog post by Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation.

He was raving about the number of interactive maps on the BBC using Bing - and they are fairly impressive.

So I left a comment saying:

I’m working on an interactive map for BBC Jersey that should go live in August looking at the islands beaches.

My only concern is that they label Jersey and Guernsey as UK and I KNOW I’ll get complaints about that from islanders as Jersey isn’t in the UK.

I can’t say I REALLY expected a response but to his credit I DID get this in reply - not a solution but at least an explanation.

Ryan - good eye. Guernsey is not part of the UK, but it is controlled by it, since Guernsey is a dependency of the UK and not an independent nation state. We currently label dependencies with a parenthetical “controlling power” suffix, so that is why you see the “(UK)” after the name.

It seems this may cause confusion. In our data model, that island is not part of the UK, but I can see how that subtle distinction might be lost given the way it is labeled. We’ll have have to investigate how to make this more clear, but at least you’ll have an answer for your customers if/when they ask.

CP

So I took that response and spoke to people that work around creating the maps for the BBC and was able to get a fault ticket raised with Microsoft over the issue.

An e-mail came back hours later saying that they agree with my analysis - that it shouldn’t have UK at all - and will contact the third parties responsible for the maps and data to see if it can be changed in the next update cycle.

So in the next few months Bing maps should no longer say (U.K.).

And they even found a solution for third party uses of Bing maps - so the BBC uses - that involves replacing the tiles in question and scrubbing out (U.K.).

Wonderful!

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This is Stephen Fry’s last stint in the hosts chair - taking over from the late, great and true legend - Humphrey Lyttelton. Over the next four weeks Jack Dee and Rob Brydon will do a stint of two weeks a piece.

But this is my pick not because it is the greatest edition of the antidote to panel shows of all time - but because Stephen Fry did an admirable job filling behind such large shoes.

Here it is:

iPlayer embed code generated using the Up Your Ego PIP.

Here is the BBC description: “The perennial antidote to panel games comes from Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket in London, with Stephen Fry the first to take on the chairman’s role from the late Humphrey Lyttelton.

“Regulars Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined by Victoria Wood.”

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Well if you pick up this weeks edition you should see yours truly standing on a beach looking all rediculous holding on to a microphone pretending to interview somebody for a photo shoot.

Basically I’ve started work on an interactive guide to all the beaches of Jersey. There is something like 40 beaches in Jersey with more nooks, crannies, bobs and ends surrounding those main beaches.

There are tourist beaches full of sand, others with stones, more with cockles and muscles alive alive… ok I went off track a little there - it is late and I’ve been standing in the sun all day.

Basically, getting to the point - I’ll be walking around the island over the next few months going from beach to beach taking photos, interviewing people (that use the beach, that live/work near the beach, that know the history, geology and nature of the beach) and writing down facts/figures and reviews of the beach.

Then sometime in August I’ll be pulling it all together along with other people’s thoughts on each of the beaches, their photos and possibly even their videos.

You’ll be shown a map (unfortunately a Microsoft map that, for some reason I haven’t worked out shows Jersey/Guernsey as being in the UK) that you can drill down into and see each of the things I’ve listed above as an pin - click the pin to see more.

While I go around the island I intend to keep notes, record my thoughts (I’ll be making a radio series about the beaches as well - audio on BBC Local sites has to have been broadcast on radio first), and will be using this section of my blog to post my thoughts as I walk around the island.

The first leg saw me walk from St Helier to St Brelade’s Bay - basically along the entire St Aubin’s Bay, up the road and round to St Brelade’s Bay - here is the route - unlike the BBC I can use Google Maps so will.

View Larger Map

You’ll be able to see the photos on Flickr in full so you can see my progress visually as well as reading it here on the blog. Next time I’ll make sure I take my laptop with me to blog en route.

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Not that the Top Gear team noticed - Andy Wilman, show executive Producer, asked the crew to work out the number of episodes and tell him when it gets to 100.

He said: “Count up how many shows we’ve done since we came back on air with Top Gear because that has got to be a landmark show and we don’t want to miss the bugger.”

Andy then went on to explain that: “I’ve just worked out that the actual 100th show was the really shit one with the Renault Avantine so I’m sorry.”

So there we have it - no leaping over caravans, burning caravans - in fact no caravans at all - just a poor to middling, if not utter turd car. Oh well.

Here is a link to a great behind the scenes video from Top Gear 13×01 to take your mind off it. I can’t embed it though. You can watch what I think is episode 100 here.

However, something I can embed for you is Top Gear 13×01 as my tip of the week.

Embed code generated using the Up Your Ego PIP tool.

And to finish off a few words on this weeks Top Gear ratings - a pretty impressive one for Top Gear and BBC Two - but not the highest of all time.

The opening episode of Top Gear 13 saw an audience of 7.1 million and a share of 30.4% reaching a peak audience of 7.8 million by 8:45.

It was hte most popular show on BBC Two by a long way - with James May on the Moon taking the second spot with 3.2 million and a 13.8% share.

In fact Top Gear also gets the award for most watched show of the day by some margin - with BBC News at 10 getting 5.2 million in second and Stephen Fry’s Kingdom on ITV 1 getting 4.6 million in third.

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