The Story of Top Gear Telly: Part Two. The Colossus
The show that finally ground to a halt just over a month ago was a colossus. 350 million viewers, 200 countries, Guinness Book of Records for most watched show, 40 year waiting list to get in the audience etc etc.
These sort of achievements however, weren?t exactly front of mind back in the days of those very first shows. In fact, I distinctly remember the most pressing issue on the morning of show one was not world domination, but how to position the
Mazda6 in front of the cameras on account of Jim, one of the researchers, having backed it into a lamp post on his way to the studio. Still, at least the car was there, which was more than could be said for the Saab we?d tried to film the week before, when Hammond and the film crew had been left staring at an empty parking space because Rowland, another researcher, had taken it to go and visit his relatives.
We were without doubt back then, completely cock-arsed. Take our genius plan to make lap times for the cars fair and equal. This was Britain ? what if it rained? What if it was sunny? How could we create a level playing field each week? I know, let?s wet the track in certain places to make it a bit wet and a bit dry? So we got two massive bowsers to spew their contents onto the track, and were baffled to discover that a) they only managed to cover a tiny portion of Hammerhead, and b) tracks dry quickly on a sunny day. This was before we even remembered that rain, when the real stuff comes, doesn?t drop just in neat sections of one?s choosing.
Still, at least Operation Wet Certain Bits of The Track to Match Rainfall That Doesn?t Actually Behave Like That Anyway would have made the studio audience laugh, which wasn?t exactly happening in the studio.
The main problem there was that the audience would turn up at say, 2pm, then stand on their feet, in a hangar that we?d either forgotten to heat up or cool down, for hour after hour while the presenters tried to record their links. We had no autocue so each piece required about 98 takes, and Jason Dawe bore the brunt of it with his lengthy and wordy Used Car News section.
Today, a pair of tickets to watch the show can fetch 10 grand at a charity auction but back then, by 8pm, when we still hadn?t finished recording, I used to have to bar the exit door and plead with people to stay: ?No, I understand you have to get home to your dinner and families and warmth and a chair, but please please stay for another half hour while Jason nails that story about secondhand Citroens.?
However, in among all these hamfisted goings-on, something was starting to click. For starters, the new directors had brought in fresh cameramen and editors who raised the quality of the pictures and the music to another level. Then you had people like Jim who, when not backing cars into things, unleashed his weird lateral brain to brilliant effect. ?Everyone jumps a motorbike over buses, but let?s see how many bikes a bus can jump,? was one of his early and superbly pointless suggestions. He then got carried away trying to find a bear that could drive an automatic, switching to a monkey when the bear option didn?t work out, but the TV animal handler lady screamed down the phone at him that she?d prosecute us if we dared put a primate in a car. Whenever she drew breath mid-rant, Jim tried to stress that the monkey wouldn?t have to worry about changing gear and said he was a big fan of the PG Tips adverts, which made her even more angry, so we ditched that and on to more important issues, such as Can a Granny do a Donut and What Toupees Work Best in a Convertible.
The combination of high-brow science like this, sexy films and a slowly improving studio started to bring us a decent audience of around three million, but, sadly, Jason wasn?t working out as a presenter, so we decided we?d let him go at the end of the first series. For a while, for some reason I cannot fathom, the BBC Management had a wobble about Richard staying, and in their usual, classic HR style said to him in December: ?We may not want you back for the second series, but, anyway, have a good Christmas.?
There was no doubt though that Richard would stay, so we were looking for a third man. It was about this time we had another visit from the BBC Meddling Department, who told us that market research showed our show was attracting young, lifestyle, trendy viewers to BBC2, so perhaps we should think about getting a young, lifestyle, trendy presenter. Ever keen to assist, we searched high and low and eventually came up with just the man: James May.
His hair looked like it had been lowered on by a trainee helicopter pilot and his shirts were clearly styled by toddlers, but since we didn?t have (and from the on-screen evidence clearly never ever had) a wardrobe budget, there was nothing much we could do in the sartorial department.
However, like Jeremy, James?s print background had given him a shrewd and witty eye on the car world, and he and Hammond bonded well. Their favourite game was eBay Roulette, which involved getting bladdered, going on the said consumer site and putting in a bid for a shockingly cheap old crock, then going to bed and waking up to see if you?d won.
The other good thing about James was that on nearly all issues motoring, he agreed with Jeremy on absolutely nothing; and if you think Jeremy can stick with his opinion, he is a mere striplet of corn blowing in the wind compared with the stubbornness of May.
With our trio now complete, the growing of the show could begin. In our heads we were making a car show for car dweebs, but as Series Four went to Five went to Six, we realised that the actual growing was sprouting in directions we hadn?t reckoned on. Kids were watching, grannies were watching, and if I?d had a quid for everybody who said ?I?m not into cars but I like watching your show,? I could have afforded to stop making the show.
At one point, the Meddling Department arrived bearing more news from the outside world. Nearly half of our audience, they now declared, was female. Before they had a chance to follow that up with the inevitable suggestion to get a woman presenter, we shooed them out and carried on.
At first, I couldn?t work out why so many girls were watching, because, let?s face it, those three walking down the street are hardly going to be mistaken for Westlife, but then you realise that girls love men who are funny, who are a bit nerdy passionate about their thing, and who don?t actually try and be attractive. I think they also probably looked at their partner on the sofa, Stella can resting on his beer baby, looked back at the telly and thought ?I haven?t done so badly after all.?
Obviously the kids were there for the Lamborghinis and the stunts, which had now grown from a bald man with a bad wig in a convertible to playing darts with cars, sending a Mini down a ski jump and trying to launch a Reliant Robin into space. I believe kids also loved the fact that Richard, James and Jeremy, besides having the same mental age as them, are intrinsically unfair and mean to each other, just as kids can be in the playground.
As the audience grew in number and type, so did the size of the Complaints Bag, with more and more angry letters landing on my desk demanding that we stop arsing about and get back to doing proper tests of sensible cars for real people. We made a Wall of Complaints as a home for the best and most vitriolic ones, and Jeremy?s response was to invent the fictional character Mr Needham, who would write in every week, demanding the said sensible test of a sensible car, and then we?d give him the Fiesta attempting a beach assault with a company of Marines. Every problem, basically, was dealt with in as daft a way as possible. Perry, our lovely black-suited Stig, asked for a massive pay rise so clearly he had to go, and hence he met his demise off the end of an aircraft carrier.
Looking back, I wouldn?t say we were clever enough to plan all the good things that happened. Some stuff was just a happy accident. We went to Florida and Alabama to make a 25-minute film about buying your own hire cars, then when we got back found we?d accidentally shot enough stuff for an hour, and that?s how the Specials were born.
I think another seminal moment in the Hall of Happy Accidents was the ?1,500 Porsches film. That began as a small road trip to see how good a cheap Porsche would be, but when Jeremy?s 928 conked out just over a mile from the start line, his genius editorial brain realised that crap cars breaking down was going to give us more entertaining telly than brand-new ones that worked. Hence we started doing cheap car challenges, with the highlight probably being James?s Lamborghini actually turning up to the start of the film, on an AA loader, having broken down before we?d even started filming.
Another happy accident was the Cool Wall, which came about simply because we wanted something in style terms to talk to Trinny and Susannah about when they came on the show.
Bottom line, we were too thick to think up these things from scratch, but smart enough to recognise something when it worked and then flog it to death.
Some stuff, though, did come as a result of hard brainstorming. It had to because, unlike say, Wife Swap or The Apprentice, the contents of which were shaped by a disciplined format, we would start each series with a blank sheet of paper. We knew there would be cars and bad shirts and a Stig, but beyond that bugger all. Luckily there was enough
brilliant brainpower around to keep the new strands coming. It was Series Four, I think, before we did our first big race, the DB9 to Monaco, and it wasn?t until Series Eight that we attempted our first Top Gear engineering projects, with the amphibious cars.
If some ideas didn?t work out, we?d just ditch them and move on. Top Gear Dog for example. Great idea at the time, but it either lay in a coma or ran around being completely mental. I think she?s currently living out her retirement in Hammond?s house somewhere.
What I never had to worry about were the words coming out of the presenters? mouths. Any producer would be blessed to have those three. They would set off on a road trip, no script, just a few bullet points in their heads, and riff away like mates. At some point we gave them control of the On/Off switch for their in-car
cameras, which was a mistake because Christ do they go on, but so much of their drivelly banter was gold.
All of this high-end content came wrapped up in a wonderful authenticity that for me was the genuine expression of reality television. When in Bolivia James said to Hammond ?You running into the back of me stopped being funny three series ago,? he meant it, and the viewers got that. When Hammond is throwing up on that sinking boat in the race to Oslo, he really is throwing up because the daft sod had had a skinful on the ferry the night
before. When they got hurt ? Jeremy knackering his shin driving his truck through a brick wall, James smacking his head open in Syria ? the blood and pain was for real. Obviously, though, there was one event when the pain got a bit too real, an event that began with Hammond walking into the office one day and saying ?I?d like to go really f*****g fast this series,? and ended with him on life-support in a coma.
None of us, for as long as we live, will forget that day when the tyre on his jet car blew at 288mph and he pitched over into the world?s fastest-ever car crash. Part of me thinks that boy survived only because he is just so tough. He really is a human Honey badger; who else would be riding a dog sleigh to the magnetic North pole just six months after he woke up in a brain injuries unit thinking he was Admiral Nelson?
While Hammo was recovering, the accident itself had propelled this pokey little car show onto the world stage, and for a while our audiences in the UK alone were hitting eight million a week, but soon the window shoppers moved on and we settled down to life with the genuine followers. And, by the way, when Hammond crashed, there were three racing drivers who took the trouble to find the number for the office and ring up to send their best wishes. I will appreciate that for ever, so thank you, Eddie Irvine, Jacques Villeneuve and James Toseland.
On the subject of surviving, anyone who works on any TV show constantly plays the guessing game of how long the show itself will last, when will the numbers start to drop, how many series will you manage before the bosses pull the plug. In 2002, I estimated we?d be around for five, then a year later I upped my guess to 10 series. In the end, we managed 22, the viewing figures were still strong, and I?d given up the guessing game because in TV terms, we were now in uncharted waters. Sure there are programmes like Have I Got News For You that have been around for longer, but they replenish their stocks by drawing on what?s happening in the news each week. We, on the other hand, had to come up with new stuff all the time, because, with the best will in the world, you can?t survive on road testing the new Golf, and I can?t think of another show that followed that path so well for so long.
Partly it?s down to the genius of the presenters, who were ideas men just as much as they were gobs on sticks; partly it?s down to the researchers and producers who came up with many great thoughts and worked so hard their hourly rate was probably the same as a Vietnamese child labourer. Partly it?s down to the arts and crafts boys ? the directors, cameramen, soundmen, editors, graders, dubbing mixers ? and partly it?s down to all the backroom
mob: the mechanics, the runners, the coordinators, the lot. Many brilliant people.
As I say, we set out to make a nice little show for car dweebs and ended up somewhere else, somewhere we never dreamed we?d be. And because we never planned it, I don?t think we?ll see the like of it ever again.
