Who is the Stig?
According to the UK Sun, a tabloid whose reporting you'd be wise to take with a little world-weary-tinged skepticism, the question Who is the Stig? is one of the most frequently searched terms in the UK, coming in at number 9 in an Ask.com ranking. The Stig is the anonymous test driver on the wildly popular UK motoring show Top Gear.
Well, the first thing that pops into mind is, who are these people using Ask.com as a search engine? Doesn't everyone in the universe use Google? Yes, everyone does use Google. It has even become a verb, to Google someone or something, and the term even officially made it into Webster's dictionary years ago. Let's move on.
According to the story, net speculation is that candidates for the Stig include Perry McCarthy, Ben Collins and former F1 driver Damon Hill.
But anyone who's ever seen Top Gear, and knows of Jeremy Clarkson's wicked, mischievous, sometimes corny, often clever sense of humor knows not to put too much stock into the "mystery" surrounding the Stig's identity. The Stig may very well be some second-rate, washed up stunt man who once did a gig on a Bond movie. Or there may be no Stig at all. Just a collection of random test drivers who happen to be employable at any given time for Top Gear filming.
