It is, says Jeremy Clarkson, very difficult to make a television show about cars. You have to remember to look at the right camera and to provide the right details about the car you are reviewing. And you have to do so without being incredibly boring.
So it’s just as well that, for the purpose of their live show, which had its first Australian leg in Perth on Saturday night, Clarkson and fellow former Top Gear hosts James May and Richard Hammond have never appeared on television. “For legal reasons, nothing we have ever done together has ever happened,” said Clarkson. “Our lawyers tell us that, for legal reasons, we have never met.”
A collective amnesia about their 12 years as hosts of the popular BBC programme was the running joke throughout Clarkson, Hammond and May Live, the first public appearance of the trio since the BBC dropped Clarkson in March after a “fracas” with a producer. That incident provided the fodder for the first joke, a GoldenEye-style clip that showed Clarkson hitting someone and being told: “You’ve crossed a line, so you’re sacked.”
It was followed by 90 minutes of quips about no longer being the hosts of Top Gear interspersed with displays of them trying to hit one another and their Australian guests – hosts of the axed Top Gear Australia, Shane Jacobson and Steve Pizzati – with cars in a series dubbed “the Cr-Ashes”.
The mostly male crowd, whose ages ranged from seven to 70, gave it a standing ovation. It is a particularly good trick to convince 14,000 people to part with up to A$200 (£94) to watch three middle-aged men behave like idiots to each other, but that’s the charm of the show.
Expensive cars were paraded for the crowd’s enjoyment, but the real point of the evening was to watch Hammond ridicule May for paying £12,000 extra to get racing stripes painted on his new Ferrari, and to listen to Clarkson grumble about motorcycles before going into a protracted series of jokes about girls liking motorcycles because of the proximity of the engine to their “tingly bits”.
There was a running segment about the hosts trying to make it in television, using a racing car driver called “The Ben Collins” to take their cars on a hot lap. The video was a clear dig at the BBC’s chances of rebooting Top Gear with its new host, Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans, with Clarkson musing that it’s “unbelievably difficult” to make a car review show for television “because even if you list all the bits about the car, it is quite boring”.
BBC director general Tony Hall announced in March that the network would not renew Clarkson’s contract because the 55-year-old, who was on his final warning after apparently using the N-word in a taping of the show last October, had “crossed a line” by subjecting producer Osin Tymon, 36, to an “unprovoked physical and verbal attack” which left him with a bloodied lip.
At the Perth Arena, Top Gear fans shook their heads about the decision to drop Clarkson. “He’s meant to be a prick,” said one man. “No one would watch it if they were being nice.”
Clarkson, Hammond and May have hinted at signing with another network and are expected to announce their new television deal within weeks, with Netflix and Amazon reportedly among the bidders. At Saturday’s live show Hammond suggested the new programme would be based in the United States. It’s understood Clarkson’s contract includes a clause preventing him from making a car show with a UK network for the next two years.
“Amazingly, there had been a lot of interest in us doing a car show for television,” Clarkson said. “Who knows, very soon once more you will be seeing us on a television or an internet near where you live.”
