Jack Whitehall had to get George Russell’s permission to tell F1 joke | F1 | Sport

Jack Whitehall has opened up on the “heavily-policed” script he had to stick to when he presented the F1 75 Live show at the O2 Arena earlier this year. Before the current Formula 1 season began, the comedian hosted the one-off event in London where all 10 teams on the 2025 grid showed off their new car liveries for the first time, on stage in front of a live audience inside the venue and to millions more around the world watching live streams.

Comedian Whitehall was given the reins, invited to host the glitzy ceremony and part of the preparation work for that gig was to come up with a script which, it seems, needed to toe a very fine line between funny and offensive. Speaking on Radio X’s The Chris Moyles Show, the 37-year-old spoke of how some of his material ended up being vetoed by chiefs.

He said: “It was heavily policed, my script, for that F1 thing. And they went through everything and they were like, ‘Right, no Bernie Ecclestone jokes. You can’t talk about Flavio Briatore’. So they all got cut.”

And he went on to add that another of his jokes would have been lost on the cutting room floor, had it not been for direct approval from George Russell after staff insisted that was the only way he was going to be allowed to tell one particular gag at the Mercedes driver’s expense.

Whitehall explained: “On that F1 show, I had a line in my script where I said that he basically reminded me of the TikTok Trainspotter. And so, I had a reference to that.

“There was this one George Russell joke and they were like, ‘Yeah, you can’t do that’. I was like, ‘No, I’m sure that it’s fine. He’s going to find that funny’. [But] they were like, ‘You can’t do it’.

“I was like, ‘Well, is there any way around it?’ And they were like, ‘Well, unless he gave you his permission’. I was like, ‘Well, can I get the joke to him?’ And they were like, ‘Well, ask his team’.

“So, they asked his team. I then had to – and I’ve never had to do this before – they said, ‘Yes, you can voice note you telling the joke to his team and then they will play it to George’.

“I voice-noted the joke to George. I was like, ‘Hi, George, so you’re going to be at this show at the O2 and I’m going to do this joke about you, and I’m just asking for your permission to do it’.

“So, I did the joke, sent it to him, and he was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely fine’. Because they all have a sense of humour – it’s all the people sort of around them that are terrified. But it was quite surreal.”