Actor's stint as The Stig hits barriers after BBC loses High Court battle

Collins is thought to be highly unlikely to return to television screens as the show’s faceless mystery driver after the mystery was very publicly solved.

The case has also cast doubt on whether the character will reappear at all in the next series of the programme, played by a different driver.

A decision on whether The Stig will be axed altogether is expected in the next two months but is unlikely to be announced before the series starts in December.

The corporation took legal action to block publication by HarperCollins of an autobiography which would unmask Collins’s identity.

But after more than a day of legal argument in private, Mr Justice Morgan said on Wednesday he would not grant the BBC a temporary injunction.

The identity of the driver has been a badly-kept secret, having already been published in news media last year.

It was widely reported that The Stig was Collins after his company’s financial reports listed Top Gear among its work.

The BBC responded that this was “no surprise” as he had appeared numerous times on the programme and had supplied drivers for it.

Simon Dowson-Collins, HarperCollins’s director of legal services, said The Stig was in court on Wednesday – but added that the publisher would not confirm the mystery driver’s identity until the book launch on September 16.