Last week Top Gear returned to television screens featuring an all-new array
of stunts, supercars and celebrities. It’s a formula that has attracted
controversy and helped the show achieve almost cult status in 20 different
countries; but it wasn’t always like that. Launched as a weekly round-up of
motoring news, Top Gear had an inauspicious start in 1977. Then it was a
rather prim and proper half-hour teatime programme — the television
equivalent of a knitted twinset.
In classic Auntie style, it featured items on road safety, toured factories to
see how cars were made and politely glossed over the fact that in those days
Lancias were rust buckets and if you crashed a Mini the engine ended up in
your lap.
A perfectly groomed Angela Rippon, the former BBC news anchorwoman, introduced
inoffensive items on car care and caravanning holidays. Other early
presenters included Noel Edmonds and William Woollard from Tomorrow’s World.
Jeremy Clarkson did not become lead presenter until three years after his
first appearance in 1988 when, as a curly-haired 28-year-old motoring
journalist, he fronted a piece about customised Rolls-Royces. It took a
while before he found his style (pregnant pauses, upward inflection for
dramatic effect, and a cutting humour that shocked a cosy motoring industry
out of its complacency), but when he did, Top Gear was transformed, pulling
in huge audiences with its mix of laddish banter and unabashed love of fast
cars. In the early days Clarkson was joined by Quentin Willson, a used car
dealer, racing driver Tiff Needell and kittenish Vicki Butler- Henderson,
later supplanted by Kate Humble. But Clarkson was always the main
attraction.
When he left Top Gear in 1999, searching for fresh challenges, audience
figures fell from 6m to less than 3m and the show was axed in 2001. The
following year Clarkson, with Andy Wilman, a TV producer and his former
schoolmate at Repton in Derbyshire, hit upon the idea of relaunching Top
Gear in a new format. “Around about that time the BBC was struggling to know
how to use Jeremy,” Wilman recalls. “He was being offered awful stuff like
Britain’s Biggest Cushions or the Top 10 Nicest Curry Spices — I forget what
exactly. When Top Gear went off the air we saw an opportunity.”
Out went sensible reviews of dull runarounds, in came the Stig, the Cool Wall,
Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, stunts, capers and supercars. Richard
Hammond joined the show for the first of the relaunched series, along with
Jason Dawe, a former car salesman and now The Sunday Times’s used car
expert. When James May rejoined the team (he had presented briefly following
Clarkson’s departure) they hit on the perfect chemistry — in Wilman’s words
“three old dance troupe queens” in a sort of motorised Last of the Summer
Wine.
Top Gear, which attracts audiences of 4m-5m, was the world’s most pirated show
last year, largely as a result of being posted by fans on YouTube, and has
inspired a string of lookalikes, including Five’s revamped Fifth Gear and
Sky’s Vroom Vroom.
Hammond: watching the crash doesn't hurt at all
The most gripping — if terrifying — sequence to be shown in the new Top Gear
series will be the one that kicks the show off: footage of the near-300mph
crash that almost killed Richard Hammond.
The programme has taken the decision to broadcast in full the final run that
ended in disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the crash it would have
been inconceivable for the BBC to show the tape, and it is testament to
Hammond’s remarkable recovery that it feels able to do so now — just four
months on.
Hammond has no qualms about showing the crash that almost cost him his life.
“If it didn’t kill me at the time, it wouldn’t kill me just watching it. But
to see the car, track, and details like the crash helmet that saved my life
and the harness that stopped me being smashed to pieces took my breath
away,” he said.
The presenter’s memories of the incident are sketchy at best: he remembers
setting off on the run, then waking up in hospital. However, his reactions
inside the cockpit have been likened to those of a jet pilot. As the tyre
broke apart, causing the car to veer to the right, Hammond immediately
applied opposite lock on the steering wheel, holding the car for vital
milliseconds before the car left the runway.
The analogy is not far off, according to Wing Commander Rob Adlam, an RAF
Harrier pilot: “When I saw the pictures I thought, ‘That’s gone, that tyre
has exploded, he’s going the wrong way and there is nothing he can do about
it.’ There is only so much you can do in the finite amount of time between
something going wrong and an accident happening.”
Some have claimed Hammond didn’t take the right evasive action, but it is
questionable whether anyone could have avoided this crash.
“Richard was strapped to a firework,” said Perry McCarthy, the former Formula
One racing driver who played the original Stig in Top Gear. “I don’t know
what happened but I can tell you that even with the amount of racing
experience that I or any other racing driver has, if something went wrong
with the car we would not be able to do anything about it either.”
According to McCarthy, the moments leading up to a crash are the most
frightening. “It’s not all over in seconds — it’s faster than that. Your
brain is recognising that you are coming up to a wall or whatever at 200mph,
so you know you haven’t terribly long and you are trying to make a plan;
there is a microprocess going on in your brain as you try to fight it using
all the skills that you have, but at the same time there is 1% of you
thinking, ‘This is going to hurt, this could be goodnight’.”
JEREMY CLARKSON
Nickname Jezza
Top Gear history Presenter from 1989-1999 then from 2002
Before Top Gear Travelling salesman selling Paddington Bear
toys for his parents’ company, journalist on the Rotherham Advertiser
Lives Oxfordshire with wife Francie and their three children
Favourite cars Bugatti Veyron, Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder,
Rolls-Royce Phantom
Look Jacket, deck shoes and Levi's 501 jeans. Drapers,
magazine to the fashion industry, blamed “the Jeremy effect” for poor denim
sales in the late 1990s
Driving style Opinionated. Clarkson’s daughter Emily
complained in a Sunday Times article of Coke cans in the footwells and
constant gripes about roadworks, “the colour of somebody else’s Ferrari” and
buses
Best lines (On the Smart Roadster) “In fact, it has exactly
the same top speed as Henry VIII”; (On the Koenigsegg CCX) “It sounds like
the Norse god of thunder gargling a hammer”; (About the Porsche 911) “Well,
this isn't so much a car, more a place where a fat, balding, middle-aged man
can go off and have his mid-life crisis ... I liked it a lot”; “Speed has
never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you,
that's the killer”
Did you know? Is the great-great-great grandson of John
Kilner (1792-1857), who invented the Kilner jar. Is learning to play the
drums. Was one of the passengers on Concorde’s last flight when he
paraphrased Neil Armstrong to describe the demise of the supersonic plane:
“This is one small step for a man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind.”
Also appeared as the voice of Harv, Lightning McQueen’s agent, in the Disney
Pixar animation Cars. Passed his driving test in his grandfather’s Bentley
JAMES MAY
Nickname Captain Slow and the Other Bloke from Top Gear
Top Gear history Presented in 1999 then rejoined in 2003
Before Top Gear Subeditor on The Engineer then on Autocar,
presented Driven on Channel 4 in 1998
Lives West London, with his cat Fusker
Favourite cars Bentley T2, Rolls-Royce Corniche, Fiat Panda
Dishevelled geography teacher/tousle-haired squire
Look Driving style Slow – although others have dubbed it “stately”. Claims
to practise “Christian motoring”
Best lines (On the Honda Element) “Would the Element be a car
for people who like hip-hop, or for people waiting for a hip op?”; “And now,
the car every footballer’s wife’s hairdresser’s masseuse has been
waiting for: the new Mercedes SLK”; “I still think I'm better at writing
than TV presenting. I’m only all right on the TV because I’m a bit hopeless,
but people seem to quite like that”
Did you know? He is licensed to fly a light aircraft. Plays
the piano and studied music at Lancaster University. Was sacked from Autocar
after he spelt out a hidden message (about how tedious a production task
was) in a magazine supplement he was subediting and readers phoned in
thinking they had won a prize
RICHARD HAMMOND
Nickname The Hamster
Top Gear history Joined in 2002
Before Top Gear Barman and “chicken chaser” at a chicken farm. Began
broadcasting career at BBC Radio York
Lives Gloucestershire with his wife Mindy and their two young
daughters
Favourite cars Porsche 911, original Dodge Charger
Look Spiky-haired, sparkly-toothed housewives’ favourite
Driving style Nippy/jet-propelled
Best lines (During the Lillehammer bobsleigh run) “Apparently
it hits Gs in some of those corners down there. The driver's told me that
he’s been doing this for six years and he’s 3cm shorter. I can’t afford to
lose 3cm!”; “Unless I have been sorely misinformed, supermodels are
powerless to 6½ resist a man with illuminated doorsills”; “I have not had my
teeth whitened” (repeatedly, in response to Clarkson's jibes)
Did you know? Has three horses, four dogs, two cats, a rabbit
and handful of chickens. Presents Cruft’s on the BBC. Is 5ft 7in tall. When
he had to work on Mindy’s birthday in 2005 he arranged for her dream bike, a
Harley-Davidson Sportster, to be delivered to their house. Following his jet
car accident he developed a brief passion for Lego
