New series: the detail

If you’ve read the Mole’s thingy, you’ll doubtless know how the record of show one went, and may I say I concur with the ‘Bana is a good bloke‘ verdict. Not only did he stay, but he stayed and drank beer; sadly, I too saw him eat from the Terrible Buffet of Out of Date Things, so I wish him well as he heads once more for the lavatory at 35,000 feet on his long flight back to Oz.

I hope you enjoyed show one. And while I can see the pulling power of X Factor, I hope you didn’t watch a pile of Z-listers eating earwigs on I’m A Celebrity. There is a higher purpose to life than that, which is obviously Jeremy shouting “Powwweeerrrrrr”.

So here we are, series 14. You’ll have noticed there was no series preview montage for it at the start of tonight’s show. But don’t worry, we haven’t turned to crap; we just haven’t filmed enough stuff yet to make a decent montage – there are still four biggish films to shoot and, basically, we’re up to our necks.

The Christmas Special in South America took way longer than we’d planned – things went to shit out there with weather and illness and vehicle breakdowns – so the knock-on effect is big. On the plus side, we think this Special will be right up there. Let’s face it: Vietnam, funny show, but hardly pushing us to the limit, whereas this one is much more hardcore.

I just started cutting it together and the opening sequence alone, which we estimated would be three minutes or so, makes 20 minutes of telly. And the editors and I were pissing ourselves at Richard, who hates creepy crawlies, having a big crisis moment when a monster flies into his cab.

So running through the line-up, I think show one is strong and show two, where the boys build their own electric car is, I would humbly say, a belter – a little bit of magic happens when they’re all together in one car, Renault Espace convertible stuff.

Show three is, gasp, for people who like cars, because we want to explore this question of which car company made the greatest number of great cars – and we’ll be asking you for your thoughts very soon on that one. So yeah, show three is a bit geeky, and to balance that out we’ve got James’s Caravan Airship film, which will take an exalted place in the pantheon of Cutting Edge Cocking About.

Show four is Clarkson in Belfast with the Twingo, doing his road test in the sewers, in an ice hockey match, trying to catch a ferry that’s left – you get the picture. Plus for those of a mental age from one to, say, two we’ve got the airport vehicle race.

As for the next show, God knows. A right gamble there, because we’re taking on the art world by setting up our own Art Exhibition of Motoring stuff. There’s a lot more to it than that, believe me, and it should pay off. But you can’t say we’re not pushing ourselves as we go on.

Then there’s the Special around Christmas, and then the Shit Show in January, the one where we have no money left. And believe me, we have no money left, not a frigging bean, so fans who’ve been on this eight-year journey with us, stick with us that night. Car-wise, the Merc SLS will be in there somewhere and the Lexus LF-A is in the can, as is the VXR Insignia.

That’s a sort of roundup, and now we must put it all together. I’ll paint a picture of life in the edit for film geeks one day; it’s my favourite place, and you never know what body odour will waft through the door next.

Just a bit of housekeeping while I’m here. You may have read that Jeremy called the studio audience “oafs” when we gave a talk in Edinburgh this summer. Naturally the papers had a good time with that, but I just want to clarify the situation. Are the audience oafs? Well yes, they are, but it’s meant as a compliment.

By oaf we mean one of us, one of the Top Gear clan, which is basically a fashion disaster who loves cars. That’s James, that’s Jeremy, that’s Richard, that’s our office. We are a brotherhood of nerds, and long may it be so.

Now to finish, I’ve noticed when people post a comment to these blog things, they usually say things like: ‘Top Gear’s great’, or ‘Top Gear’s crap’ or ‘I fancy Sabine’. Well let’s move on from there by applying, as James would say, a little intellectual rigour. I’ll pose a question and you answer.

Simple stuff, so let’s go for: who are your top three F1 drivers this season? Mine would be, in no order: Hamilton (fought like a lion all season, and showed the spirit of a fighter pilot even when battling for 15th); Vettel (just class); and finally, I’d go for Raikonnen, who dragged that dog of a car way higher than it ever deserved to go. Right, you know the drill. Get typing.

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