The ever popular car enthusiast’s program – BBC’s Top Gear presented by Richard Hammond (‘the Hamster), James May (‘Captain Slow’) and Jeremy Clarkson has one essential character called The Stig, a white-clad, white-helmeted “tame racing car driver” with a glistening black visor, who trains celebrities in doing laps for the show’s competition and who sets test times for various cars. Until recently the Stig’s identity was a secret, and there has been much speculation as to who he is. It has now been revealed that he is Ben Collins, an F3 racing car driver. Collins is planning to release an autobiography which would reveal his identity for once and for all. The BBC sought and injunction in the UK High Court to prevent this but failed.

A number of the reports mention that The Stig is subject to a confidentiality agreement with the BBC. There is a possibility that the BBC could rely on an action in contract to make The Stig disgorge his profits. In the case of Attorney-General v Blake [2001] 1 AC 268 the courts in the UK found that it was possible to award accounts of profits for breach of contract in ‘exceptional circumstances’ where the plaintiff has a ‘legitimate interest’ in performance of the contract.

The contract in Blake itself involved an undertaking in a contract of employment to the effect that, even after his work had ceased, the employee would not disclose any information about his work without the consent of the Crown. George Blake had been a spy for MI6, but he was also a double agent for the Soviets. When his treachery was uncovered in 1960, he was convicted and imprisoned, but he subsequently escaped from prison and fled to the Soviet Union. Perhaps he wasn’t being kept in the fashion to which he was accustomed after the fall of the Iron Curtain, because in 1990 he published an unauthorised autobiography entitled No Other Choice. The British government was outraged to hear that Blake was being paid £150,000 for the book by his British publishers, and successfully sought an account of profits over all profits remaining in the jurisdiction (some £60,000 had already been paid to Blake in Russia, but about £90,000 remained in Britain). Some of the cases which have developed jurisprudence around a similar concept are Pell Frischmann Engineering v Bow Valley Iran Limited [2009] UKPC 45; Vercoe v Rutland Fund Management Limited [2010] EWHC 424 (Ch). The end outcome of this legal battle remains to be seen.