Top Gear’s Clarkson Signs on for MGEITF

LONDON: Among the highlights of the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival (MGEITV) will be a Top Gear Masterclass, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter of the hit BBC Two show, and executive producer Andy Wilman.

Other highlights include Internet entrepreneurs offering their insight and experience on building commercial businesses on the web in the session How to Make Money Online. Panellists such as Kristian Segerstråle, the CEO and co-founder of Playfish; Patrick Walker, the director of video partnerships for EMEA at Google; and Peter Bazalgette, an investor and the non-exec director of My Video Rights, will be on hand.

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the writers, producers and directors of hit sitcom Outnumbered, will look back at their 30-year career history in the session Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin: 30 Years of Polluting the Airways. The financial pressure of delivering news will be examined in That Was The News That Was. In the session Whose Whine Is It Anyway, Britain’s issues of taste and decency will be given a lighthearted look by comedians such as Frank Skinner and Lucy Porter.

Other speakers confirmed for MGEITF include the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation for Europe and Asia, James Murdoch; Gerhard Zeiler, the CEO of RTL Group; the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston; Peter Fincham, the director of television at ITV; Ofcom’s chief executive, Ed Richards; Ashley Highfield, the MD and VP of consumer and online at Microsoft UK; ITV stars Ant and Dec; The Wire creator, David Simon and actor Ross Kemp.