The refrigerator thing would definitely deserve being yelled at, don't you think? Employees have been fired for lesser offences.
It still wouldn't justify a 20 minute screaming tantrum that disrupted the entire hotel.
You're assuming that there were not earlier events which led to this event, and also that the producer didn't say anything to exacerbate the situation.
Look, violence is not a wonderful answer to something other than violence or impending violence, but the anti-Clarkson force seems to believe that he just got the wind up his arse and started throwing fists. But since none of us were party to the conversation, and none of us know what was said, none of us knows how unreasonable violence was as a response.
As someone who was bullied in almost every possible way in school, including a whole lot of verbal abuse, I know that verbal abuse can be as painful as the physical kind. In fact, studies have shown that emotional abuse actually causes physical pain responses in the nervous system. That's right, words literally hurt. If the BBC were as progressive as they'll have you believe, they'd fire people for saying mean things to other people. And then it might well have been the producer who was out of a job, before he even got a chance to eat a fist.