She’d watched the show plod on, each series
looking more and more dated alongside new and
fresh factual shows, and no attempt at perking
up the dear old car show was having any effect.
News of the show’s demise was met with sadness
by a few, indifference by many more, but with
intense interest from a tall curly-haired man who
had quit that very show a couple of years earlier.
When Jeremy Clarkson rang me and we met in a
pub, he was already bouncing off the ceiling with
enthusiasm for resuscitating the old corpse. In
fact, he’d already mapped out some of the key
elements: The new Top Gear would be anchored
from a central place, with an audience, so that
the presenters could talk to each other instead of
presenting one item after another in isolation.
This studio base would also allow us to do
a news section, so that important cars could
be discussed without us being forced to shoot
a film about them. Jeremy had devoured Nick
Hornby’s High Fidelity, and if you’ve also read it,
you’ll know how beautifully it illustrates the male
brain’s love of lists and Top Fives. From there,
it was only a small mental leap to having a lap
board, which in turn would require a track, which
in turn meant we could film Italian supercars.
And since we had a track and a studio, why not
get guests on and make them do a lap? One of
us then had this vision of a black-tie-clad Bryan
Ferry hammering round in a small Hyundai, and
when we’d finished laughing, the Star In A Rea-
sonably Priced Car was born.
And as I sit here now in April 2015 , in a com-
pletely empty office, I think of what the BBC has
lost in getting rid of Jeremy. It hasn’t just lost a
man who can hold viewers’ attention in front of
a camera, it has lost a journalist who could use
the discipline of print training to focus on what
mattered and what didn’t. It has lost an editorial
genius who could look at an existing structure
and then smash it up and reshape it in a blaze of
light-bulb moments. Just as a small example of
that latter point, I remember Jeremy insisting
during that lunch that the new Top Gear should
not worry about being the first to drive a new
car, even if it was the Ferrari Enzo. To me, as a
producer, this logic was madness, because being
first meant being exclusive, but he said: “No,
think about it. To be first with a new car, you have
to go on the car launch, drive it abroad three or
four months before it goes on sale, and it means
nothing to a punter at home. Let’s wait. Let’s film
a car when it’s actually on sale here, posters on
the showroom window, so that what we’re doing
actually means something to viewers.” I still
thought he was talking bollocks, but I couldn’t
have been more wrong—in the end, we didn’t
lose a single viewer because we were two years
later than everybody else with our Enzo film.
All we needed now was a name for our new
Top Gear, and, after a few more drinks, we decid-
ed on New Top Gear. With that sorted, we went
and pitched our idea to Jane, the BBC 2 controller
who, after a few minutes suffering our babbling
stream of consciousness, told us to get out of
her office and get on with making it. There’s
no doubt in my mind this show wouldn’t have
existed without Jane. She gave us the freedom
to cock up and try again. She pushed us when we
were timid, and she had real TV wisdom. I re-
member sitting in an early meeting with her and
some BBC execs, discussing what sort of stories
this new Top Gear would film, and I mentioned
an item Jeremy and I had once made on old Top
Gear about Siamese Banger Racing, where the
drivers raced in two cars chained together.
Naturally, being a BBC meeting, somebody
then erupted at me for having said “Siamese.”
Jane called everyone to order and said the point
was we should forget about reporting on other
people’s car events. “Make your own world,”
was her advice, which, when you think about it,
was precisely what we ended up doing—James,
Jeremy and Richard lived in their little juvenile
bubble, just doing their thing.
But I digress. Back then, in 2002 , the first job
was to find some new presenters, so we rented a
small studio in Acton and started to screen-test
the long list of hopefuls, with the audition involv-
ing them standing next to a Renault Avantime
and talking about it for a bit, and then doing some
news items with Jeremy. Quite early on, a fat
bloke with a Shakin’ Stevens quiff called Jason
Dawe walked in, cracked us up with his wit and
bowled us over with his ability to make second-
hand car news sound exciting.
James May then rocked up. Jeremy and I had
known James for years as a motoring journalist,
and he’d been hired, briefly, then fired, quickly,
from old Top Gear. This audition, then, was im-
portant if he was to get another shot at the prize.
So, James, being James, took one look at the
Avantime, dismissed it as marketing bollocks,
scanned the news stories he was supposed to go
through with Jeremy, threw them to one side and
proceeded to tell us how his old Rolls-Royce was
costing him so much in fuel he’d had to take up
Sainsbury’s offer of cheap petrol with every £200
shop. Then he left, leaving some bemused BBC
executives staring into the middle distance.
Back in our tiny office at the BBC, the amount
of VHS tapes sent in by would-be presenters had
now reached the ceiling. We got them from car
dealers, students, classic-car nerds, even lingerie
models. Then a producer called Kate Shiers
walked into the office brandishing yet another
VHS tape and said the guy on it was worth a look.
He was small and energetic, and he was doing a
terrible car review while dressed as Batman. But
there was something about the chap, so Richard
Hammond was invited to come in.
On the day, he turned up in a bad shirt and
waffled some old nonsense about the Avantime,
then trotted through the news bits okay, but
there was nothing that lived up to the promise of
his tape. Then, as the audition wound up, Richard
started to talk about his woefully unsuccess-
ful career as a radio DJ. By the end of this tragic
anecdote, everybody in the room was crying with
laughter. It takes balls to come into a hotly con-
tested audition and tell tales of your failures, but
it was the right move because self-deprecation—
although we didn’t know it at the time—was
going to play a big part in Top Gear’s humor.
With the auditions complete, it was time to
choose. All of us were in agreement we wanted
the funny little failed radio DJ, but, beyond that,
it was a world of arguments. The plump car
dealer, Jason, was a front runner; Jeremy was
campaigning for James; but the BBC grown-ups
were adamant a woman should be in the lineup.
Now, I’m a big, big fan of the Beeb, but, my
God, do they stretch your patience when they
start “applying their marketing logic,” or to use
another word, meddling. Their theory behind a
female presenter was that if you want women to
watch something, you need women presenting it.
But Jeremy and I had already started to real-
ize that male banter was going to become an
important part of the show. And so, Jeremy and I
86 TOP GEAR PHILIPPINES WWW.topgear.com.ph