Clarkson and May. Hammond just out of shot.
It’s back! Top Gear returns for its tenth series, bringing joy and meaning to our Sunday nights once again.
Fronted by Jeremy Clarkson, officially Britain’s most opinionated man, and ably assisted by James May and Richard Hammond, the show defines what it means to be a petrolhead in the early 21st Century.
But it’s not all about fast cars, foreign locations, glamorous celebrities and brilliantly weird features…OK, it is.
In the series the boys attempt to drive to France (that’s over the water, not under it), triumph in a pukka 24-hour endurance race at Silverstone, speed across Botswana and pitch a Bugatti Veyron against a fighter jet.
Top Gear is on BBC at 8pm every Sunday until December 9th and repeated on the following Wednesday at 7pm.
Fascinating Facts about Top Gear
Top Gear is BBC2’s most watched programme, pulling in around 8m people each week in the UK and is aired in over 100 countries worldwide.
Given the size of the studio audience (400), the number of shows per season (eight on average) and the number of people applying for tickets, the show would be sold out for at least 19 years.
Jeremy Clarkson used to have an English Electric fighter jet parked on the front lawn of his Chipping Norton house. He had to remove it after the council objected: “They wouldn’t believe it was a leaf-blower”, he moaned.
Clarkson once described Americans as “barely having the brains to walk on two legs” and claimed that “in some parts of the States locals have begun to mate with vegetables”.
James May once got fired from a car magazine for writing a supplement in which the first letter of each road test contributed to a sentence that eventually read; “Road Test Year Book. So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It's a real pain in the arse.”
11 October 2007
