Post by RedMoon11 on Jan 3, 2019 16:15:54 GMT
James May interview: 'Jeremy Clarkson is Incapable of Doing Anything'
Benji Wilson
3 January 2019 • 7:00am
The Grand Tour takes its three presenters all around the world, but as yet it has never left them stranded on a desert island. Today, however, I am forcing James May to think of doomsday scenarios: if he had to choose just one of his long-time co-hosts, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, as a fellow castaway, who would it be?
“Hammond,” says May decisively, speaking in his office in west London. “He’s much more… useful. Jeremy can’t do anything. I’ve never discovered anything he can do.
"I mean he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn’t be able to light a fire – I know this from experience. I don’t think he’d be able to cook anything, he can’t put a tent up, he’s not in any way practical…”
Leaving aside the practicalities, May says that Clarkson would also be insufferable.
“He drives me nuts. I would say Jeremy is the most conservative of us, and he’s the most establishment. Despite his reputation for being anti-establishment, he’s actually probably part of it. He’s the enemy.”
The irony is that for May, working with “the enemy” has made him very famous and very rich (he is worth an estimated £9million). The third series of The Grand Tour launches this month, featuring Clarkson, Hammond and May driving and bickering in locales ranging from Colombia to Mongolia.
In the trailer, May, 55, plays the bagpipes, is hit on the head by a flying cabbage and laughs uproariously at Clarkson and Hammond’s various misfortunes (as they do at his). This unlikely combination, forged in the BBC’s Top Gear, has become Amazon’s highest-profile hit and if it started out as a car-themed show, three series in it has turned in to something very different.
“We’re turning in to a sitcom,” says May, whose office is a little bit like a spoilt teenager’s bedroom, with a mini motorbike, a Lego Porsche and a life-size cut-out of its owner dressed as Bond. There’s a large gap where a desk should be.
“Hammond took it this morning for some reason. I’m not sure why.”
As his office suggests, The Grand Tour takes all manner of disparate ingredients, including but not limited to cars, and glues them together using only the force of its three stars’ personalities.
“The focus has been gradually moving away from cars for quite a long time, to be honest. I think in the future we will be seen as more of a travelling adventure programme.”
I meet May on the day Amazon announces that The Grand Tour has been recommissioned, but that series four will be different. The “tent”, the studio under canvas that used to travel the world and then settled for series two in the Cotswolds, is now going altogether. Henceforth, The Grand Tour will consist of Clarkson, Hammond and May on big, special road trips, “larking about” as he puts it.
“In the olden days, we always had a suspicion that the big specials as we call them, the whole programme-length films, were the most popular bits, but it was very difficult to analyse.”
Amazon don’t publish ratings, but they are awash with data.
Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson in Mongolia, filming the third series of The Grand Tour Credit: PA/Ellis O'Brien
“With Amazon, when you’re online, they can analyse it to the ends of the world. They know when people pause it to go and make a cup of tea and we know now what the most popular things we do are: the road trips. Because they’re the best things we do, we may as well concentrate our time and money and efforts on them.”
That money is even a consideration is intriguing. The first series of The Grand Tour cost a reported $160 million (£127 million). Dragging the tent and the small town of other tents that went with it around the world was ludicrously expensive.
Amazon has plenty of cash, but it also has the analytics to know whether it is getting value for money, and the trailer for the new series makes explicit reference to working with smaller budgets.
May won’t talk about costs but he is proud of the fact that the show has evolved in response to viewer demand. Not only is the Big Tent on the way out, but they have dropped features (Celebrity Brain Crash) and drivers (“The American”) that were, to borrow The Grand Tour parlance, “a bit rubbish”.
“With Amazon, when you’re online, they can analyse it to the ends of the world. They know when people pause it to go and make a cup of tea and we know now what the most popular things we do are: the road trips. Because they’re the best things we do, we may as well concentrate our time and money and efforts on them.”
That money is even a consideration is intriguing. The first series of The Grand Tour cost a reported $160 million (£127 million). Dragging the tent and the small town of other tents that went with it around the world was ludicrously expensive.
Amazon has plenty of cash, but it also has the analytics to know whether it is getting value for money, and the trailer for the new series makes explicit reference to working with smaller budgets.
May won’t talk about costs but he is proud of the fact that the show has evolved in response to viewer demand. Not only is the Big Tent on the way out, but they have dropped features (Celebrity Brain Crash) and drivers (“The American”) that were, to borrow The Grand Tour parlance, “a bit rubbish”.
James May Credit: Clara Molden for The Telegraph
“We may as well be honest,” says May, who was born in Bristol and moved into TV after several years as a sub-editor for motoring magazines. “A lot of television assumes the viewer is a bit daft, and I don’t think they are. With TV now and social media and so on they smell a rat very, very quickly.”
The Grand Tour has been ruthless in jettisoning the bits that sent viewers off for cups of tea. A similar, though slightly more panicked, evolution has taken place on May’s old show, Top Gear.
It’s been something of a revolving door over at the BBC with first Chris Evans and then Matt LeBlanc leaving the show as it has sought ratings stability after Clarkson, Hammond and May’s abrupt departure in 2015. This year the one man left standing, Chris Harris, will be joined by two new presenters: Freddie Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness.
“A cricketer and a comic,” May says. “I’m really keen to see what they do with the new guys, because it’s quite a radical choice. They may have been extremely clever [putting them with Harris] because Harris is a proper nerd: he races cars, and he buys and sells cars; he knows his stuff.”
Does Freddie Flintoff know his stuff? “I’ve never met him, but I know that he’s very into cars. He has quite a few cars, and he’s been into them for a long time.”
Either way, May thinks Top Gear has been “going uphill”, saying he watches the programme “avidly”. He is friends with Harris from his motoring journalism days. “It’s healthy to have two car shows. Why not? The viewer gets twice as much car show to watch, if they’re into that sort of thing, and we can spark off each other a bit. It’s competitive, it’s good.”
“We may as well be honest,” says May, who was born in Bristol and moved into TV after several years as a sub-editor for motoring magazines. “A lot of television assumes the viewer is a bit daft, and I don’t think they are. With TV now and social media and so on they smell a rat very, very quickly.”
The Grand Tour has been ruthless in jettisoning the bits that sent viewers off for cups of tea. A similar, though slightly more panicked, evolution has taken place on May’s old show, Top Gear.
It’s been something of a revolving door over at the BBC with first Chris Evans and then Matt LeBlanc leaving the show as it has sought ratings stability after Clarkson, Hammond and May’s abrupt departure in 2015. This year the one man left standing, Chris Harris, will be joined by two new presenters: Freddie Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness.
“A cricketer and a comic,” May says. “I’m really keen to see what they do with the new guys, because it’s quite a radical choice. They may have been extremely clever [putting them with Harris] because Harris is a proper nerd: he races cars, and he buys and sells cars; he knows his stuff.”
Does Freddie Flintoff know his stuff? “I’ve never met him, but I know that he’s very into cars. He has quite a few cars, and he’s been into them for a long time.”
Either way, May thinks Top Gear has been “going uphill”, saying he watches the programme “avidly”. He is friends with Harris from his motoring journalism days. “It’s healthy to have two car shows. Why not? The viewer gets twice as much car show to watch, if they’re into that sort of thing, and we can spark off each other a bit. It’s competitive, it’s good.”
Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May in Scotland, filming the third series of The Grand Tour Credit: PA/Ellis O'Brien
Amazon’s other announcement on the day we meet is that it is looking to make solo projects with Clarkson, Hammond and May. No details have been confirmed, but whatever May does, it’s bound to be interesting. He may not be the funniest or silliest of the trio with whom he’s made his name, but he is the most thoughtful. Talk to him about the future of mobility and he spirals off into musings on personal flying machines. Mention politics and he reveals a carefully calibrated set of beliefs.
“I believe in free-market capitalism but I [also] believe in society and I believe in the common good and the unifying lure of human kind, which is what religion really is except it’s been corrupted,” he says.
The irony is that this forward-thinking progressive still looks like a forlorn roadie. He’s wearing the usual floral shirt today and, after a brief flirtation with a short haircut last year, the long, grey, ageing-spaniel hair is back. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Again, it’s the viewer polls. People didn’t like it short. So it’s here by popular demand.”
The Grand Tour begins January 18 on Amazon Prime Video
Amazon’s other announcement on the day we meet is that it is looking to make solo projects with Clarkson, Hammond and May. No details have been confirmed, but whatever May does, it’s bound to be interesting. He may not be the funniest or silliest of the trio with whom he’s made his name, but he is the most thoughtful. Talk to him about the future of mobility and he spirals off into musings on personal flying machines. Mention politics and he reveals a carefully calibrated set of beliefs.
“I believe in free-market capitalism but I [also] believe in society and I believe in the common good and the unifying lure of human kind, which is what religion really is except it’s been corrupted,” he says.
The irony is that this forward-thinking progressive still looks like a forlorn roadie. He’s wearing the usual floral shirt today and, after a brief flirtation with a short haircut last year, the long, grey, ageing-spaniel hair is back. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Again, it’s the viewer polls. People didn’t like it short. So it’s here by popular demand.”
The Grand Tour begins January 18 on Amazon Prime Video
