Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s Amazon show is unlikely to get many viewers in the UK, Piers Morgan has claimed.
The former Top Gear trio signed a $250m (£160m) deal last month to front a new motoring show on Amazon Prime Instant Video.
But while Clarkson’s long-term adversary thinks it will be a global success, he doesn’t think it will be big in their own country.
“To Amazon Past Their Prime?” Morgan told RadioTimes.com. “I think they will do well globally with the online show, but what they won’t do is have a big audience in this country.”
The former Britain’s Got Talent judge also claimed Clarkson and co’s profile with the British public would soon diminish once they are off a mainstream TV channel.
“They’ll very quickly realise – as I did after leaving Britain’s Got Talent – that when you’re on these huge shows, you can’t walk around for being mobbed by people but then the oxygen of that fame very quickly diminishes.
“They’ll be able to walk around the streets and, I imagine to Clarkson’s horror, he won’t be being mobbed.”
Morgan and Clarkson have had a feud for more than a decade, reaching a low point when the then Top Gear host allegedly punched the former Daily Mirror editor at the 2004 British Press Awards.
The pair apparently called a truce last year when they went on what Morgan described in his Mail on Sunday column as a “five-hour drinking session” in their local pub.
“We’re never going to be best friends, obviously. Too much blood, literally, has been spilled,” he wrote.
“But we attended a lavish birthday party in Venice recently where we ‘danced’ together to a live set from Duran Duran, both punching the air to The Wild Boys and Notorious. So the rehabilitation process is ongoing.”
His comments came as he prepares to launch a new series of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories on ITV on 4 September.
