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" Top Gear producers are reportedly considering killing off The Stig. The Daily Star claims that the BBC is concerned that the character can no longer appear on the show since he was revealed to be racing driver Ben Collins. Collins was named as The Stig yesterday when the BBC lost a court case which aimed to stop him releasing a book about his time on the show. A source reportedly claimed that Collins has already been axed from the series and added: &amp;quot;Our viewers love not knowing who The Stig is and this action has spoiled that and made Ben&amp;#039;s position untenable. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve now got to decide whether The Stig remains on the show or goes. No decision has been made yet on the character. We&amp;#039;ve got to consider whether it&amp;#039;s been ruined for our millions of viewers, or can be salvaged.&amp;quot; Simon Dowson-Collins, from the autobiography&amp;#039;s publisher HarperCollins, confirmed that The Stig was in court yesterday but refused to say whether Collins is the mystery driver. However, he added: &amp;quot;We were very surprised that the BBC took such action to prevent freedom of expression. We maintained all along that the information is already in the public domain.&amp;quot; The show&amp;#039;s original test driver, The Black Stig, was killed off in the third series. It was later rumoured that he was axed because it emerged that Perry McCarthy was the face behind the mask. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a271373/top-gear-planning-to-kill-off-the-stig/>