hard brainstorming. It had to because, unlike,
say, Wife Swap or The Apprentice, the contents
of which were shaped by a disciplined format, we
would start each series with a blank sheet of pa-
per. We knew there would be cars and bad shirts
and a Stig, but beyond that...bugger all. Luckily,
there was enough brilliant brainpower around to
keep the new strands coming. It was Series Four,
I think, before we did our first big race (the DB 9
to Monaco), and it wasn’t until Series Eight that
we attempted our first Top Gear engineering
projects, with the amphibious cars.
If some ideas didn’t work out, we’d just ditch
them and move on. Top Gear Dog, for example.
Great idea at the time, but it either lay in a coma
or ran around being completely mental.
What I never had to worry about were the
words coming out of the presenters’ mouths. Any
producer would be blessed to have those three.
They would set off on a road trip—no script, just
a few bullet points in their heads—and riff away
like mates. At some point we gave them control
of the On/Off switch for their in-car cameras,
which was a mistake because, Christ, do they go
on, but so much of their drivelly banter was gold.
All of this high-end content came wrapped up
in a wonderful authenticity that, for me, was the
genuine expression of reality television. When in
Bolivia James said to Hammond, “You running
into the back of me stopped being funny three
series ago,” he meant it, and the viewers got
that. When Hammond was throwing up on that
sinking boat in the race to Oslo, he really was
throwing up because the daft sod had had a
skinful on the ferry the night before. When they
got hurt—Jeremy knackering his shin driving his
truck through a brick wall, James smacking his
head open in Syria—the blood and the pain were
for real. Obviously, there was one event when the
pain got a bit too real, an event that began with
Hammond walking into the office one day and
saying, “I’d like to go really effing fast this series,”
and ended with him on life support in a coma.
None of us will forget that day when the tire
on his jet car blew at 460 kph and he pitched over
into the world’s fastest-ever car crash. That boy
survived only because he is so tough. Who else
would be riding a dog sleigh to the North Pole six
months after he woke up in a brain injuries unit?
While Hammo was recovering, the accident
itself propelled this pokey little car show onto
the world stage, and for a while our audiences in
the UK alone were hitting eight million a week,
but soon the window shoppers moved on and we
settled down to life with the genuine followers.
On the subject of surviving, anyone who
works on any TV show constantly plays the
guessing game of how long the show itself will
last, when the numbers will start to drop, how
many series you will manage before the bosses
pull the plug. In 2002 , I estimated we’d be around
for five, then a year later I upped my guess to 10
series. In the end, we managed 22 , at which point
the viewing figures were still strong, and I’d given
up the guessing game because in TV terms, we
were now in uncharted waters.
Partly it was down to the genius of the pre-
senters, who were ideas men just as much as they
were gobs on sticks. Partly it was down to the
researchers and the producers who came up with
great thoughts and worked so hard their hourly
rate was probably the same as a Vietnamese child
laborer. Partly it was down to the arts and crafts
boys—the directors, the cameramen, the sound-
men, the editors, the graders, the dubbing mix-
ers. And partly it was down to all the backroom
mob: the mechanics, the runners, the coordina-
tors, the lot. Many brilliant people.
As I say, we set out to make a nice little show
for car dweebs and ended up somewhere else—
somewhere we never dreamed we’d be. And
because we never planned it, I don’t think we’ll
see the likes of it ever again.
TOP GEAR TV
‘ANY PRODUCER
WOULD BE BLESSED
TO HAVE THIS TRIO.
NO SCRIPT, JUST A
FEW BULLET POINTS’
THE £1,500
PORSCHESJEREMY DRIVES
THE PEEL P50CAR VS. TRAIN
TO MONACO£10,000
SUPERCARSRELIANT ROBIN
SPACE SHUTTLERELIANT ROBIN
TESTTOP GEAR GOES
CARAVANNINGJAMES DRIVES UP
A VOLCANOTOP GEAR
CAR DARTSTHE INFAMOUS
USA SPECIALTOP GEAR WINTER
OLYMPICSRICHARD BEING
SICK ON A BOATAYGO VS. FOX
FOOTBALLTOP GEAR
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CARS PT190 TOP GEAR PHILIPPINES WWW.topgear.com.ph