Jeremy Clarkson to reveal secrets of Top Gear's success
Jeremy Clarkson will deliver masterclass at MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in August

Leigh Holmwood The Guardian UK
Monday 29 June 2009 06.56 BST

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is to deliver a masterclass at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in August.

Clarkson's session, part of the full confirmed lineup for the festival which will be officially revealed tomorrow, will see him and Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman explore why the show is consistently BBC2's highest-rating programme and talk about the recent publicity stunt in which Michael Schumacher was jokingly revealed as The Stig.

In other sessions, internet entrepreneurs including Kristian Segerstråle, chief executive and co-founder of Playfish, Patrick Walker, director of video partnerships at Google, and Peter Bazalgette, the former Endemol executive who is now a non-executive director of My Video Rights, will offer their insight into building commercial businesses on the web and explain how the TV industry needs to change to create a successful online business.

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the writers, producers and directors of the critically lauded BBC1 sitcom Outnumbered, will reflect on 30 years in British comedy, from their early careers writing on shows such as Not The Nine O'Clock News and Who Dares Wins to Drop The Dead Donkey, in the session Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin: 30 Years of Polluting the Airways.

Meanwhile, the prospect of the BBC becoming the UK's only public service TV news provider will be examined in That Was the News That Was, chaired by ITV newsreader Julie Etchingham, with panellists including Chris Birkett, executive editor at Sky News, and John Hardie, chief executive at ITN.

Britain's complaining culture over issues of taste and decency will also be examined by comedians including Frank Skinner and Lucy Porter in a lighthearted session entitled Whose Whine Is It Anyway. Using the Ofcom complaints list as a guide, the panellists will work as an "alternative Ofcom committee" to uphold or reject the complaints.

The festival takes place between 28 and 30 August.

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