Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has described the people who go to the filming of the hit BBC2 show as "oafs" and admitted flouting health and safety rules.

Clarkson, appearing at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday alongside executive producer Andy Wilman, also said women were often pushed to the front of the audience so they were seen behind the presenters.

"We get 500 people coming to the show each week and most of them are oafs," he said. "Who would you rather have in our shots?"

But he said it would be a "disaster" to have a female presenter on the show. "I think a girl would be a disaster, seeing the chemistry we have now," he said. "You bring a girl in and you start taking the piss out of her, that would look like bullying.

"I remember when we were doing the original screen tests [for other presenters] and BBC people were insisting we had to hire a girl after we had selected [Richard] Hammond, so we just got James May."

Clarkson, 49, has previously courted controversy at the filming of Top Gear, which takes place in an old aircraft hanger, by describing Gordon Brown as a "cunt" in comments to the studio audience that were not broadcast. But he said he did not think he ever overstepped the mark. "I don't think we do," he said. "I don't think we even get close to it."

Clarkson also admitted sometimes purposefully ignoring BBC health and safety rules, and gave the example of when he drove a lorry through a brick wall.

"I was told the fastest I could go was 30mph," he said. "I thought this is going to look phoney so I put my foot down. But only when I got up close to the wall did I think I was going too fast. And it did hurt. But doing a show like Top Gear, presenters are going to get hurt or killed.

A Top Gear spokesman said last night: "Jeremy, Richard and James look like oafs, as do most car blokes, so it's not like they are separating themselves from the audience."