How Clarkson’s PUNCH Made Me A Top Gear Presenter | 4K
right I want a fast lap and fast answers okay let’s do it Clarkson having or may oh so this was it this is where Top Gear was filmed I even saw Chris Harris he was here on the same day I remember looking at him thinking I feel really bad because that dude ain’t gonna get it no I’m not going to comment on that I like them the same whatever the year 2016 the place dunstvold Aerodrome Top Gear are going through their biggest evolution in decades so out goes Jeremy Clarkson Richard Hammond and James May and in comes a whole fresh lineup of talent including Rory Reed and today I’m going to speak to the gentleman himself and find out a little bit about what it was like to host the world’s biggest motoring Show how he became the host of water Trader and generally just find out a little bit about what makes him tick look at the Devil hello what are you doing uh well we’ve got a bit of work today we’re doing a
drag race in a minute oh okay yes more importantly before that I’m here to do something different you want to promote your podcast don’t you I do yes everybody needs to tune in um what’s it about well we match a celebrity with a car chosen specifically for them based around their lives and their stories so where was my invitation are you a celebrity ouch fair play all right this is your invitation this is my invitation okay all right jump in then we’ll go down memory lane shall we all right [Music] thank you [Music] so how did you end up on Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson so he punched you can thank him by the way he punched the producer in the face a guy called OSH um it’s a real like sliding doors moment because whatever his reason was for it if he didn’t have that reason and he didn’t do that then none of this would be happening right now wow so he did what he did the BBC said we’re not going to renew your contract and Hammond and may followed him and that meant Top Gear needed some new presenters so they hired Chris Evans they paired him up with or rather he paired himself up with Matt
How Clarkson’s PUNCH Made Me A Top Gear Presenter | 4K
LeBlanc Joey from Friends sounds a bit surreal yeah gets more surreal though because they also hand-picked Eddie Jordan F1 team boss um and Sabine Schmitz as well and they had space for one more person so the way they did it was they put it out on the internet and the newspapers and the magazines and a TV show saying we are looking for a Top Gear presenter and we are going to open it up to absolutely anybody who wants to apply all you have to do is send in a 60-second audition tape and we’ll consider you and I remember I was told over 15 000 people from all over the world auditioned I remember talking to other car journalists like we were like traveling the world like reviewing cars I mean basically anyone who says that they were a card journalist and didn’t apply for Top Gear is probably lying yeah most people applied for that job so what was your Show reel like you know what I’ll I’ll play it all right here it is I’m probably going to regret this but this is my anti-audition don’t hire me because I’m an expert I’m a car journalist I’ve driven everything from an Austin to a zitrus I can tell a V8 from a V12 from a mile away boring stuff hire me because I can tell stories well I can explain what the numbers mean how they make you feel how a box on Wheels can shape an adventure and I
can do it in a way that’s engaging relatable cool if Clarkson and Idris Elba had a love child that will be me so if that sounds appealing on any level then get in touch that is brilliant so different but I got your attention yeah did it did they go in on on that um do you know I’ve never spoken to Clarkson to this day Idris Elba I met Idris Elba at like a BBC function and he was working the room I remember him coming up to my little bit where I was and he goes so what do you do and I go oh yeah I’m one of the new Top Gear presenters and he looked me dead in the eye and he went I wanted that job and then he walked off for real he just walked off and I was like oh was he joking I wasn’t really I’m still not sure to this day so um I don’t know maybe he was just being dramatic I have a really funny memory of you when we were doing a show and we’re sitting in the back of a Range Rover or some sort of 4×4 but you were wearing a pink baby Romper as part of the shoot I think it might have been baby blue yeah sure and I and it was talking it down with the way it was such a surreal moment but I remember I don’t know why we were talking about it but you saying then that you really really really wanted to become a presenter on Top Gear yeah you were like manifesting it yeah definitely 100 do you know what like when you do a job that so closely mirrors your dream job when you get an opportunity to do it and it
seems even semi-realistic I think you’ve got to put it out into the universe and just believe in yourself that that is possible so how did you then get your foot in the door right so I sent in my audition tape but I was like laser focused on this so I I got in touch with like producers at the BBC saying you know when you do like a cover letter to support your 60 second tape I did that um saying how good I was and how much I thought it that I I thought that I suit the role and um I also got in touch with um Sky one so I’ve done a TV show on Sky one before so I got in touch with their commissioning editors and the subject line in there because I saw on Twitter he had written I would never hire anyone that punched a fellow employee in the face so my subject line in my email to him was I don’t punch people in the face just because I wanted to get his attention right and then in the subject in the body of the email I was like listen Top Gear is like I don’t know if it’s coming to an end or what but maybe sky wouldn’t do a car show um we kind of know each other I think I’d be great for it if you’re considering doing a car show then um get in touch and they did they got in touch but they you know they weren’t doing a car show at
the time what did they say they said um love the subject line really got my attention um and if we ever do a car show we’re gonna get in touch with you and to to see if anything’s possible it never worked out that way but as it happened Top Gear got in touch and yeah they they call me up to do a screen test what did they say when they got in touch well I remember feeling like really nervous you know when you get a call from like a job interview or um maybe like a crush you get someone’s number and they call you and it flashes up on the screen you’re like oh it’s happening it’s happening so it was a bit like that and they started asking me like pretty much like loads of questions like loads of personal questions loads of career questions even things like what’s your favorite sweets what’s your favorite crisps and things like that and everything they asked me felt like a test it felt like if I answer this incorrectly like they’re just gonna hang up the phone so cryptic yeah but in the end they said listen we want you to come in and do a screen test on Monday the 7th of September this is back in 2015. I remember feeling like wow it’s finally on it’s happening and with that I asked Rory to take me back to that autumn day by stopping off at the place where his Top Gear Adventure began [Music] so this was it home base this is where Top Gear was filmed so you got the big Hangar over there that was a studio and this is where all t
he cars would arrive that we test on track and that was the office where all the planning happened it had the green room for all the talent you can even see the helmets are still there so tell me about the screen test what was that like quite nerve-wracking so I remember like the day leading up to the screen test I played Eminem Lose Yourself Non-Stop and um I rocked up the first thing they wanted me to do was a walk around of a Golf GTI in the studio because they wanted to see what I looked like in that setting and it was the Top Gear Studio you walked in the logos there the cameras are there the lights are there the people are there and I remember them apologizing because they didn’t have an auto queue and I was like no problem because I’ve been drilling it into my head they actually sent me half a script and I had to write the other half of it and it was all drilled in my head knocked it out one take and I remember thinking the only ways down from here because that went as good as good as it could have gone and then I walked in there and I was kind of faced with the next step which was to actually drive a car on track which was the bit that I was quite nervous about I remember seeing there’s a guy called um Tom Ford Wookie he was a presenter on fifth gear and a writer on Top Gear magazine and I went up to him trying to get rid of Intel you know I was like listen um what’s the crack how’s everyone doing like what
do you need from people and he was like everyone’s all right but no one’s no one’s really like sending it everyone’s just like taking it a bit easy and a bit safe I was like right say no more I know what that means that means you’ve got to go out there and absolutely Drive the pants off this car and that made me even more nervous because you don’t just deliver your lines you’ve got to drive like you see on the TV show as well scary that’s where Matt LeBlanc had his um Winnebago so he had a special treatment he would have his like five star stuff me and Chris were in the far corner the old presenters then they were long gone by then I tell you what the first time I walked in there you could almost feel the presence of these old guys walking in there it felt like walking into someone else’s living room and seeing all their stuff and all their dodgy collection of you know stuff that you don’t want to see the first episode I did I remember seeing I think there were about 800 people who came to watch the show the first episode that I was involved with and they all like I could I was in that building and I watched them all file in and I remember my heart just going it was crazy but yeah super nerve-wracking but once you’re doing it you’re doing it you know sink or swim wow and what about the first time that you were given a car and had to drive through these Gates knowing that you were about to come out and do your
first yeah top kit Like official Top Gear lap so in the screen test yeah that was a Mercedes C63 they’d rigged up all the cameras in it I walked through these Gates and they were like jump in you got 15 minutes show us what you got all right come on then Rory show me what you got pressure’s on now [Music] the drift yeah and could you I know you can now I’m pretty sure you couldn’t back there I I genuinely I because I was a motoring journalist I could drive so I’d had lots of tuition on tracks with instructors at high speed and I could control the car but the way that you were expected to drive in those situations isn’t to just jump in to someone’s Porsche or Aston Martin and slide it about because it’s not set up for that those events you know they’re there for you to understand the car and get the most from them and for you to go right I’m just going to switch off the traction control and send it into a corner no one’s going to do that for you so the only drifting experience I had was when I borrowed a Ferrari and I took it to a little crusty test track I think it was at the Haynes Museum and uh me and my cameraman were filming something and I just started like playing about with it and I was doing some sliding doing some spinning and generally just destroying the tires um so no is the short answer yeah but when you’ve got all these people cameramen all around the track and you’ve got all the producers watching you on binoculars or whatever it’s sink or swim that is serious pressure it really is and I bet there were loads of them as well right yeah I mean every corner every single corner and it’s not just about concentrating on them it’s concentrating on saying the words so what I did was I thought let me take the first couple of laps because I’ve never driven the track before let me take the first couple of laps medium speed get my words out and then once I’ve got the words out I’m gonna just go for it so deliver the lines one take and uh and at the end of it I remember thinking wow okay you nailed that now concentrate on the driving
and I just I just literally threw it into Chicago threw it into Hammerhead and somehow the car was sticking and doing what it was supposed to and I remember watching the footage back and it was really cool it was really cool did you know or did you think you’d done enough so at the end of it the thing that I felt was Pride more than anything I was proud of myself that I’d made it onto the Top Gear test track which is a place that not many people get to drive first of all and that I did a good job like and I aced my lines or so I thought um I aced the driving which was the major thing that I was kind of worried about and I left here like beaming from ear to ear because I think I was thinking to myself I got this I really got this I even saw Chris Harris he was here on the same day I remember looking at him thinking I feel really bad because that dude ain’t gonna get it okay but you know when you feel like when you do a test and at the end of the test sometimes you can feel like um I didn’t do good there but sometimes you walk out the room thinking yeah fair play I knew I knew what I was doing that’s how I felt [Music] but it turned out Rory didn’t get the job weeks later he received a message from the production team saying he hadn’t been chosen but not being one to give up he took matters into his own hands so you’re back again huh I told you never leave me I wanted you for myself I was cold and I was greedy emotional needy I see me drive past a couple times I suppose you never seen me I wouldn’t dare dismiss you I care and miss you ain’t nobody else comparing with you I ain’t moved since you left me I’ve been hearing since you so much in common we even share initials but we had our Flame I remember when you came forth in race form got the time just goes this time is Ghost Outback’s lyrical about you every time I spoke so this time is prose Rhymes and flows to convey my feelings about a ride this dope well I’ve never seen a review like that what made you do it like that a bit different in there do
you know what it was a bit of a rescue mission I think because you get so far and you get turned down I felt like I had to do something to turn it back around I actually had a friend shout out to Paul um good friend of mine um he texted me and said have you got a job yet and I was like nah mate they turned me down they said no and he just as calm as you like said change their minds and I was like is this guy off his trolley like is he nuts they’ve said no to me and he’s just like no change their minds so I was like okay what can I do to change their mind so um I actually emailed them and said you know what was what was the issue then they went you’re all great we’re just we just don’t think it’s it’s for everyone so to me that meant I had to do something to stand out a bit so I called up Rolls Royce I said uh give me any car you got like I need it really really quickly and I wrote this like spoken word poetry thing shot it with two of my mates edited it myself so then I emailed the lady at the BBC who had actually turned me down and I said I made this video I think it’d be really cool if you check it out and if I pass across again in the future you know great so be it that was it 8pm by 6am she’d watch the video and email me saying I’m going to put this in front of people eight hours later I got a phone call and she said you’re a Top Gear presenter that was it if I hadn’t have done that video If I had just said if I did if I didn’t listen
to my mate who said he said change their minds and I just accepted it none of that would have happened you must have learned so much from that moment it all comes down to perseverance like believing in yourself and having the right people around you as well you don’t necessarily need someone who’s going to give you every single piece of advice laid out in front of you but when you’ve got someone in in your corner that believes in you that just says go succeed then sometimes that’s all you need and you know I say that to people all the time if you’re passionate enough about something go get it so what was that cool like changing I think I remember I mean not just the call but or everything that happened after it so I got a call from Chris Evans it’s like I’m down the pub come down the pub come and meet me and um he was there Harris was there a bunch of producers were there like the big bosses were there everyone’s like having a few beers after work and I was like wow um and someone took a picture and um it was a newspaper and um and and I couldn’t say anything at that point but it was like it was official and then I remember that like on a Monday morning hearing my name being read out on the radio because they were listing every single like new presenter and I was taking the bins out and I sort of collapsed on the on the kitchen floor like in I guess Joy I just overwhelmed because like from t
hat moment like like life obviously wouldn’t ever be the same wow and then what like what was that then like do you know what it was such a whirlwind because it happened pretty quickly um like it was just overwhelming there was a lot of obviously work to be done they offered me extra gear my own little spin-off show and everything was moving a million miles an hour but I guess the tricky part was adjusting to those changes because like you had like media attention you had like journalists knocking on your door on your friends and Family’s door I had to make my circle a lot smaller actually because I kept seeing like pictures from my Facebook appearing in like tabloids and I was like who’s like selling photos of me to the newspapers sorry to me sorry was it you I hope you got paid very well it was a grander pop it was a good so he I had to like literally just like shrink back into myself a little bit and that was probably one of the most difficult moments actually wow yeah that’s like a real Pro and the pros and cons I guess of of that massive life change yeah exactly because you can never be the same person again almost you’ve always got to watch yourself I asked you I’ve rang you a couple of times moaning about like yeah how stressful it was at times I remember though like a couple of pictures being released and you being like it’s just not portraying me in the light that it was intended I had two
shotguns right yeah that was that was the one and you’re like they’re looking like a rude boy yeah yeah yeah yeah they just tore that to Pieces yeah and of course that makes you look a certain way to the people right yeah um totally taken out of context but I mean it was it was a tough a tough time but at the same time like super exciting because we had work to do yeah and then so then what was it like then working with the others um it was great I I really enjoyed it I was super excited the thing that maybe was a bit kind of disappointing was that I grew up watching Top Gear and I assumed that all the guys were mates and it would go out for drinks at the pub after every shoot or whatever but it wasn’t really like that it was more like a job you know like you’d you’d Rock up you do your filming and then people would like go there go there disappear and I was like oh we’re not like Three Amigos anymore that’s gone but we have to earn that over time we had to build that Rapport amongst each other and build that friendship so you did the show for three years do you have any regrets it wasn’t all like sunshine and rainbows like how people might look at it from the outside might think it was it was it was work it was a job but it was a job that I loved and the job I’m still doing having left the show so I yeah I enjoyed every every moment of it even the bits that maybe weren’t you know the nicest bits it was all part of an
experience that I’d never never take back so why did you leave that’s a great question so Matt left he wanted to be closer to his daughter and his family he was commuting like across the Atlantic so the gang kind of broke up from that point and the BBC had to kind of rebuild the team but what they had for me was a new role covering the evolution of electric cars the next generation of vehicles and I was still part of the Top Gear family but I got this incredible offer from also Trader um total kind of editorial Freedom they told me go and build a channel for us in the way that you want to do it like use your creativity use your vision do what you do best to create the next generation of AutoTrader and it was such a big name as well Auto Trader right huge that I couldn’t I couldn’t say no to it no I’ve got a question for you actually why why are you wearing Odd Socks because it’s lucky I was wearing on socks lucky lucky or lazy lucky I can’t wear matching socks like really can’t I didn’t notice about what if you pick up two socks that match automatically you just you just Chuck one away no I turn one inside out you are absolutely nuts I have to have Odd Socks on how weird all right if I fair enough yep what are we doing another round for you more questions yeah yep all right let’s do it right I want a fast lap and fast answers okay let’s do it ready yep okay Clarkson have no make oh uh fast me me oh interesting Harris or LeBlanc Rory well yeah fair play can you actually answer it um no I’m not going to comment on that I like them the same whatever okay p1918 or LaFerrari do you know what the first date I turned up at a shoe here Chris Evans tossed me the keys to his LaFerrari and got it goes drive it um but I’d have to say uh P1 what’s the best place you’ve been to in Top Gear uh I’ve been to Cuba that’s probably the best place the most exciting place though was Kazakhstan because we got to see a rocket launch
memory from Top Gear um probably I’d say it’s a tie seeing the rocket go up into space because you’re right on the launch pad at bike and all that was incredibly special and also going around the Nurburgring with Sabine that was Unforgettable Legend uh least favorite memory oh um I don’t know do you know what I don’t I don’t think I have one genuinely I enjoyed the majority of my time there maybe all the extra press stuff that goes along with it I’d say I didn’t enjoy that yeah like not seeing friends again that you know it was all a bit of a stressful time in in places um did you have a crash I never crashed that’s not true genuinely I’ve never crashed no not on Top Gear no I mean they put me in situations where I very nearly crashed all right my first shoot was in a Ford Mustang up in um Scotland and director girls right Rory drift around this hairpin up up a mountain and I’m like you’ve never been in the car with me you’ve never seen me drive before and you’re saying to drift around this hairpin on a mountain um yeah but no one died yeah it was all good uh who was the most annoying person on the show that’s a good one do you know what Eddie Jordan but in in a good way because he’d Rock up to your hotel room and start playing the spoons and start just jamming out randomly um which if you’re trying to learn your lines or something is maybe unwanted but yeah no he’s he’s brilliantly hilarious
least favorite presenter from your time you’re gonna have to wait for the book would you would you go back you know I feel like that period in my life is done I feel like I’m still doing the same stuff that I love doing on Top Gear minus a few of the headaches shall we say so do I want to go back to the headaches I don’t know I always say look forward never look back yeah could you do that now please I’m a TV I’d say I love doing TV but YouTube is the one definitely more freedom more fun you can interact directly with people we can talk to the people watching you yeah so yeah YouTube all day okay can we stop now because I’m gonna hop me too [Music] [Applause] okay why don’t I ask you a couple of questions then oh okay so tell me about your podcast what’s it called it’s called show on the road yep and what’s the what’s when does it go out so it started on the 18th of June and so far three episodes have gone out so we’ve had gogglebox and I’m a celeb star Scarlet Moffett lioness Jill Scott and love Island voice over sensation Ian Sterling and we’ve got five more to go and it comes out on Wednesdays it’s available on Spotify Apple podcasts and Google podcasts so I interview celebrities in a car that we have matched with them yeah based on their lives or either their childhood favorite cars or their dream car or something that reminds them of their childhood nice yeah right well it sounds great um I’m gonna tune in I’ve actually already heard an episode it’s pretty good if you guys want to check out show on the road make sure you download it in all the places you find your podcasts should go faster yeah
