IMHO, it's textbook JC, he loves to flirt around emotive/sensitive subjects and be all, "it's PC gone mad, I'm just a bloody bloke, saying bloody blokey things, just like down the bloody bloke pub with my bloke beer". He's not got any actual gags so he does "humour" via controversy. Then there's a bit of press coverage, it goes away, job done.
However, he's playing with fire on this one, also with the bridge wordplay in the Burma episode and the Mexican thing a while back, it starts to build a profile up - he should just leave this subject alone and upset the Greens and Guardianistas and Cyclists with his CO2 emissions and climate change denial stuff. He's turning into a real life Partridge, and not in a funny way.
FWIW I don't think he's "a racist", I personally think that's more defined by how you approach and treat people than use of language, but he's so close to the line here that I don't know where it is in relation to his enormous, tedious mouth.
As said above in other posts, it'll make no odds to anyone in the real world but the growing professionally offended culture we're incubating in the UK will have a field day. I'm all for avoiding people/programmes that I don't like/enjoy (as opposed to banning them or whatever else), but that's not enough for everyone and plenty will have had their knives out for a while now. He's undoubtedly worth millions so it's not like he's going to be impacted in any way, whatever the outcome. He just might have to sit in the racist corner with Ron Atkinson whilst the camera points elsewhere in future.
What I do think is intriguing is the question of the ethics of someone leaking potentially sensitive and offensive outtakes outside an organisation that employs them.