Controversy has followed Jeremy Clarkson most of his life – here's his timeline of trouble preceding the BBC's decision not to renew his contract.
The 1970s
Clarkson's parents financed his private school education by selling Paddington Bear toys. Michael Bond, Paddington's creator, later said he almost sued them but decided against it after meeting them in a lift.
But private schooling didn't work out so well as Clarkson claimed in his autobiography that he was expelled from Repton School before he could take his A-levels for "drinking, smoking and making a general nuisance" of himself.
The 1990s
During the days of Cool Britannia, Clarkson allegedly claimed that staff at Hyundai - a South Korean car company - had all eaten dog, and that a particular car's designer had probably eaten a spaniel for lunch.
The comments at Birmingham's Motor Show were slammed by Hyundai UK as "bigoted and racist and deliberately vindictive". Hyundai later lampooned Clarkson in a spoof show called Top Deer.
The 2000s
In 2000, the Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan obtained paparazzi photographs of Clarkson snogging a woman who was not his wife. Clarkson begged Morgan not to run the story and said he was "not physically capable" of having an affair.
Morgan was taken by the plea and downplayed the story, but lost his sympathy when it happened again two years later. Clarkson confronted Morgan at the 2004 Press Awards and punched him in the face.
With the financial crisis gripping Britain in 2009, Clarkson referred to politician and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown as a "One-eyed Scottish idiot". Brown had lost all vision in his left eye when he was 17 after a rugby accident. Clarkson apologised for the reference to his injury but refused to rescind the word "idiot".
The 2010s
In 2010, the BBC was forced to apologise after Clarkson said the Ferrari F430 Speciale "looked like a simpleton" and should have been christened "speciale needs".
Public sector strikers were the target in a 2011 rant when he said: "I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families." He added: "I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed, while the rest of us have to work for a living?"
Perhaps the ultimate Clarkson controversy occurred in May 2014. A clip filmed several years ago but never broadcast appeared to show Clarkson reciting the nursery rhyme 'Eeny, meeny, miney, mo' and he appeared to use a racial slur in the second line.
Controversy in 2014 continued with the controversial 'slope' reference during a conversation with Top Gear co-presenter Richard Hammond while looking at a makeshift bridge over the River Kwai.
Then in October 2014 the Top Gear crew were chased out of Argentina by angry protesters after driving through Patagonia with a number plate ending in 'FKL' – which was interpreted as standing for 'Falklands'.
The BBC denied it was a deliberate act, but then Argentine police found a spare number plate in one of the cars that the team had left behind. It read: 'BEII END'.
