I agree. But when I was young, I said something that really pissed off an older co-worker and he got caught by the boss trying to beat me to a pulp. (I kept blocking and laughing) The boss said "What's going on?" I said "Nothing". He was happy to not have to get involved and it made my rep as a stand up guy.
The show is dead and just doesn't know it yet and I hope the producer dude did everything he could to prevent it. It's going to hurt more people than Clarkson.
Yes I’m pretty sure that this is a little incident that’s been blown up. If left alone, after a bit, when everyone had cooled down, Clarkson would probably have apologised, bought the guy a beer,and that would have been that. Thats how blokes settle disagreements. But, unfortunately, it DID get blown up. Non BBC employees witnessed it and told the press about it. And once that has happened, the BBC would have little choice but to investigate the incident officially.