James May is shutting the company into which he funnels his multi-million pound earnings from activities including fronting and making TV shows including Top Gear.
May set up Blockhead and May in 2005, two years after he returned as a co-presenter on the second season of a revived Top Gear.
The 53-year old, currently appearing in a BBC4 series called James May: The Reassembler, has more than £5m in assets and cash as the company financial documents reveal. May’s assets are worth almost £5.4m, £4.75m of that cash in the bank, and he paid £180,000 in corporation tax and VAT to HMRC.
May has elected to voluntarily wind up the company which like many stars he uses to place earnings from activities including writing books and columns for magazines and newspapers, presenting fees for shows and TV production income.
Blockhead and May, of which May is listed as sole director, lists its nature of business as “motion picture production activities” and “artistic creation”. The closure of the business follows the formation of a new company with his former Top Gear co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and ex-Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman.
The trio set up W Chump & Sons – a combination of their names – in July last year as they struck a deal to launch a show to rival Top Gear on Amazon’s video service.
Last month, Nigella Lawson shut her company Pabulum Productions, with a windfall of about £2.2m, which she set up in 2001 shortly after Nigella Bites launched on TV.
