Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a television show called Top Gear. And on this show, Top Gear, some people in Argentina got pissed off over some stupid license plate. We all thought this whole thing was over by now, but an Argentinian judge wants to put former host Jeremy Clarkson in jail for up to three years over it.
In case you’ve just turned a year old (congrats, happy birthday!) and you’ve forgotten what happened, a long game of telephone-with-crappy-cell-reception led to rumors that the Top Gear crew was traipsing through Argentina with a license plate mocking the country’s loss in the Falklands War. In actuality, the plate just said H982 FKL, which is only really a reference to the Falklands War if you’re very creative and looking for an excuse to be a terrible person.
In order to avoid offending anyone further, and in an attempt to ameliorate the situation, the crew swapped the H982 FKL plate out for something that was slightly less of a non-reference to anything.
And that’s apparently a problem, according to the BBC:
A group of Falklands War veterans appealed against the closure of the case and it has now been reopened by the court of appeals in the Tierra del Fuego province.
The prosecution accuses Mr Clarkson of “falsifying, altering or suppressing the number of a legally registered object”.
“We think that the Top Gear team changed the plates with full knowledge of the fact that it was illegal,” spokesman Osvaldo Hillard of the Centre for Malvinas Veterans said.
In essence, you can’t change your license plate without approval from the authorities in Argentina. Doing so can cost you anywhere from six months to three years in jail, as the BBC notes.
It’ll probably take forever for this to get sorted, and Clarkson will, in all likelihood never see jail time for this dumb thing.
Could make for a fun TV special, though. Maybe Amazon will film it.
Ph oto credit: Getty Images
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