Jeremy Clarkson has candidly admitted that he and his co-stars Richard Hammond and James May were “mostly smashed” during the filming of The Grand Tour.
The forthright TV personality revealed this during a Q&A session following the premiere of The Grand Tour: One For The Road, hinting it might be the last time we see the famous trio in a car show together.
Fans congregated at Clarkson’s newly opened pub, The Farmer’s Dog in the Cotswolds, on Friday night September 13 for an exclusive ticket-only event to get the first look at the show. Sharing behind-the-scenes antics, Clarkson informed attendees how they ended up with extra space on a cargo plane meant for equipment and crew, which they decided to fill with beer.
When questioned about their alcohol intake during the episodes, the 64 year old jested: “I’ll let you into a little secret. We had a big cargo plane to move all of the kit we needed to film and a crew of 70 people and more but we didn’t fill the plane. A third of it was left we thought, ‘so what should we put on that? ‘ Beer was the answer. But we do drink a lot, we are mostly smashed hopefully, nobody will notice.”
Despite asserting there was a responsible three-day break before they started driving, Clarkson confessed that wasn’t quite the case. Reflecting on his illustrious career, Jeremy Clarkson has admitted that his passion for cars has waned, candidly remarking that modern vehicles are “they’re all s**t now” and not mincing words when he described Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, as a “s**t hole.”
He declared: “Genuinely 80 per cent of them now 90 per cent, I couldn’t even identify. I don’t know what they are, I don’t care.”
The proprietor of Diddly Squat farm also looked back fondly on his Top Gear adventures, recalling the memorable shoots in Alabama and Argentina, where some of the show’s most controversial episodes were filmed. In Alabama, Clarkson and his co-presenters found themselves in hot water after their cars were vandalised with provocative slogans, leading to a hasty retreat from an enraged local crowd.
The situation escalated in Argentina when a number plate seemed to allude to the 1982 Falklands War, causing a diplomatic stir. Clarkson recounted: “I was more frightened in Alabama than Argentina. In Argentina, we bravely flew away before the trouble started. The crew was there, and they had a really torrid time. Alabama was bad everybody ran there.”
He went on to describe a tense moment: “At one point, I found myself behind James May’s Cadillac. Behind me was a pickup truck with good old boys with guns – I guess it was a kind of ‘look after your mates’ situation. I thought, “f*** that,” and overtook James, leaving him to it – it was pretty scary.”
When asked who the fastest driver out of Hammond, May, and himself was, Clarkson responded: “Richard has driven fast twice, had his trousers cut off twice, and got in an ambulance twice. James once went 45 mph, and it nearly killed him.”
Mishearing the question “What’s next for you? ” as “What sex are you? “, he quipped, “Oh the Labour Party’s here!” He also revealed his top choice for the star in a reasonably priced car, naming music legend Bryan Ferry as his ideal guest. Despite Top Gear’s influence, he commented: “We never thought we were influential.”
Reflecting on past reviews, he stated: “It reviewed the Ford Orion and I gave it a really hard time.” Despite his criticism, he observed: “It went on to be Britain’s best-selling car.” He then pondered over another review: “I then said the Renault 6 TL was brilliant but they sold six.”