JAY KAY TEASED CHEF Friday April 17,2009
By Gareth Bebb
express.co.uk
A JEALOUS pastry chef vandalised singer Jay Kay’s £1million Ferrari after the star mocked him then took a girl the hotel worker liked back to his room, a court heard yesterday. Aaron Billington, 21, smashed the windscreen and side window of the Jamiroquai frontman’s 227mph car with stones.
He was jailed for 20 weeks after he admitted causing criminal damage to the black Enzo supercar last month. Billington, who had drunk a bottle of vodka, lost his temper after seeing the 39-year-old singer taking two women, including one the chef had an “emotional attachment” with, to his £140-a-night room at the Brudenell Hotel in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Ipswich Crown Court was told Jay Kay also “mocked” him about his stutter.
The car – which Kay called his “love machine” in a song called Black Devil Car – was parked outside the hotel where Billington worked. Judge David Goodin said: “The criminal damage was a spiteful offence. It may have been committed in drink, but the car was plainly someone’s pride and joy.”
He jailed him for 10 weeks for damaging the car, and 10 for breaching bail and making off from hotels without paying.
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I always thought Jay Kay was a dick - this just proves it. 20 weeks for damaging some arsehole's car is far too steep though, especially as he mocked his stutter. Pity he didn't knock his teeth down his throat instead.
Jeremy Clarkson? Politicians? Aston Martins? Don't get Top Gear's James May started... How did debonair concert-standard musician James May become one-third of television's most raucous presenting team? No, he doesn't know either - and that's not the only thing puzzling him... By Simon Lewis
13th June 2009
The man at the bar could very easily pass for a washed-up roadie. His middle-aged spread is testing the torsional limits of a T-shirt emblazoned with fighter jets, and his shoulder-length hair dangles in his eyes. Weighing the relative merits of the house ales, he has the hangdog expression of a man whose life ends at the pub door. But appearances can be deceptive. He looks tired because he's just got off a flight from Los Angeles, and what he's saying is this: 'I was sitting in the car, being driven round a course for the new series of Top Gear, and I thought, "God, he's going to hit that jump if he's not careful." 'And he did. Over we went. About 70ft in the air in a Subaru Impreza.'
To James May, what's remarkable is not that he survived such an Evel Knievel stunt, but that, on a Monday lunchtime in central London, he's not being mobbed by fans. Top Gear is one of the BBC's most popular shows of all time, with nine million British viewers and 150 million worldwide. Although not on the same pay as Jeremy Clarkson, May is thought to take home at least £20,000 an episode, alongside the earnings from his own TV series, a number of columns and the odd book. If not exactly in the celebrity A-list, he's rising rapidly through the ranks.
'When I joined Top Gear, I never imagined in a million years that it would turn into the phenomenon that it has,' he says. 'If I had, I would have thought twice about it, to be honest. I find being famous slightly embarrassing.' Is it true he gets love letters? 'It seems indiscreet to mention it,' he replies. 'They wrote them to me, not to the world... They're all mad, obviously. A couple have come to the pub to find me. I've had things left for me - fruitcakes, bags of sweets, spam, a smoked haddock... I want these ladies to know that I've eaten every single one. It never occurred to me that they might be poisoned.'
May, a sex symbol? It's hard to believe, but there are electronic acres of the internet devoted to his charms. He undoubtedly scrubs up well. And he does have lovely hair. 'When I was 16,' he says, 'I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be. 'I can't change it now, in case we have to reshoot: it would mess up the continuity.'
The hair may not change, but much else about Top Gear has, to judge by news reports following the last series of the show, which returns next Sunday. The presenters must now be censored, supposedly, after Clarkson's quip about lorry drivers. The credit crunch has forced drastic budget cuts, meaning less mayhem and travel - although May claims not to have noticed. There was even some talk of them being forced to hire a female co-presenter. But perhaps most shatteringly, the ever-anonymous Stig has been outed as Bristol-based speedway driver and stuntman Ben Collins. Will they have to kill off the Stig now his identity has been revealed?
'Well, you're assuming they got it right,' May says. 'You see, we're quite good at deliberately feeding erroneous information about the Stig into the media. Nobody's worked out that it's actually me. That's what's so amazing. It's this whole "Captain Slow/James gets lost all the time" thing, but I've always thought people are going to work it out. It's too Clark Kent. I might as well go into a phone box and come out as the Stig. But no one's twigged.'
We call for another drink. May is now on a crisp New Zealand Sauvignon, his 'hopeless addiction' to New World whites the legacy of three TV road trips with Oz Clarke. 'I like New Zealand Sauvignons and unoaked Chardonnays, but French wine is wantonly complicated,' he says. 'My technique for buying a bottle in Sainsbury's is to think of the few things I remember about grapes, narrow it down to about three bottles, then ring Oz. It really annoys him.'
May likes to downplay his intellect like this, but he peppers his conversation with literary and historical references and speaks with a well-modulated voice in perfectly formed sentences. Is he posh? Well, having grown up in Bristol and Rotherham, he first went to a comprehensive before studying music (flute and piano) at Lancaster University.
May often mentions classical composers as we talk. His favourite pieces include Chopin's Prelude No 24 in D minor for the piano and Couperin's Les Baricades Misterieuses for the harpsichord - the instrument he wanted to learn when he applied to university. Having graduated, his musical skills haven't been called for much on TV - although he did play the recorder for a morris-dancing troupe on an Oz and James Drink to Britain episode, and has written a car-ad jingle with Clarkson. 'It's for a major manufacturer; I can't say which one. I just wrote a song off the top of my head, a very bad, kind of Casio-keyboard waltz. The thing is, cars are ridiculous, and soft-rock soundtracks just make them even more embarrassing - ideally, I'd have used Domenico Scarlatti.'
May lives in Hammersmith, not the Cotswolds, with dance critic Sarah Frater, his partner of nine years, and their cat Fusker, a gift from Richard Hammond's wife Mindy. If you had to place May on a demographic curve, he'd be bang in the middle: middle-aged, middle-class, Middle England. He wouldn't like the label, though. He hates marketing, especially attempts to nail the Top Gear 'brand'.
'It's just the three of us doing stuff together,' he says. 'It's sort of like Last of the Summer Wine or The Goodies - three blokes mucking about, basically. I did a challenge with Hammond this series that involved driving the entire length of Britain from the Scilly Isles to the Orkneys in a priceless prototype of the Porsche Panamera. We had to spend nearly 20 hours in the car together, non-stop. By the end the smell inside was not good. But I don't think we're bad role models. Top Gear never does anything reckless on a road. When we go on a track, we go mad, set things on fire and Jeremy crashes, but that's what tracks are for. Apart from anything else, none of us can afford to break the speed limit. Our careers would be instantly ruined. Remarkably, Jeremy is quite a courteous driver, even though he's very rude in every other respect.'
Despite their evident (and unavoidable) closeness, it's impossible to get May to say anything nice about his co-presenters. When pushed, he'll admit that he admires Hammond's physical energy and Clarkson's productivity, but that's as nothing compared to the list of qualities he possesses that the other two don't: 'Brains, patience, charm, wit, normal bodily proportions... it's a long list.'
He's not even that emotional about Hammond's 2006 crash, claiming he always knew he'd be all right. 'He's fit and he's a very simple mechanism. It would be like trying to break a tin-opener. You can't really break a tin-opener. I suspect Hammond was a handy scrapper at school. Jeremy's the least tough, of course. He's got the size, but it doesn't count for much. HMS Hood was a very big warship but it still blew up with one direct hit.'
May doubts they'll all still be doing Top Gear in five years' time. 'I don't know if I can keep it up. Jeremy's pretty old and has brittle bones. At some point we've got to hand it over to someone else. The discussion I have with Jeremy is that one day we'll have a pub. I'm quite interested in beer, Jeremy likes wine, we both like eating, so when we stop doing the show we're going to have a Top Gear Pub. Not as a branding exercise where you turn up occasionally like Gordon Ramsay - this would actually be us serving you, all the time: beer, wine, pies, fish-finger sandwiches. We'd live upstairs. But I'm 46, Jezza's a few years older than me, so we'd have to do it fairly soon I think. None of us are particularly good at holding our drink, mind. I should point out that presenting Top Gear is not really like being in Led Zeppelin or AC/DC. We like to go out and have a laugh, but we've never thrown a telly out of a window.'
If May's continual bickering with Clarkson seems like an unhappy marriage on-screen, he says it's even worse off-screen. Filming the famous episode where they drove a Toyota across sea ice to the North Pole, they had blazing rows the entire way about the music coming out of Clarkson's iPod. It wasn't that May dislikes King Crimson, Yes and Genesis - although he wishes Clarkson's tastes extended to The Stooges or Guns N' Roses - it was that Clarkson likes to talk over music, whereas May likes to listen to it. The pair argued almost constantly - until they almost went through the ice.
'That was the most scared we've ever been. Every muscle in my body was primed for death. There was a hammer in the car for breaking the window in the event of going under, and I'd loosened it so that I could free it with one finger. I was rehearsing it in my mind - "If we go through the ice, I'll do that, that and that to free myself, grab Jeremy if necessary... I have a pathological terror of falling through ice. I nearly drowned once. I fell off a boat and got cramp, and was rescued by an oil-rig diver, a great bear of a man who simply leant into the water and scooped me out with one finger.'
May started out as a magazine sub-editor, before 'starving' as a freelancer, then joining Top Gear in its Clarkson-free late-Nineties period. He might reasonably have expected to get through his career without plunging to his death. The irony is, now he even seeks out danger on his days off.
'I probably shouldn't admit this, but I was recently on the final approach to an airfield in my light aircraft when I went to close the throttle, pulled the mixture lever by mistake and killed the engine. I managed to glide it in, just, but what an idiot. Not as bad, though, as the time I was taking off on my own and I realised I had the seat too upright. I reached down and pulled the seat-adjusting lever... but of course, because I was in a climb, the seat just fell away behind me. And because I was holding the yoke, I pulled that back and sent the plane into a vertical climb... I nearly stalled, which at 300ft would have certainly killed me. People would have looked in the wreckage and thought, why was he flying with his seat reclined? I've never told anyone about that before.'
Perhaps unsurprisingly, May has yet to convince his girlfriend to fly off on holiday with him. 'Truth is, most light-aircraft enthusiasts fly from one airfield to another airfield, pop into the cafe, have a cup of tea and fly back. We flew to Goodwood for a cup of tea the other week; it probably cost me £100.' Expensive, maybe, but it does sound terribly civilised. He's much the same when it comes to cars.
'I've got a Seventies Rolls-Royce Corniche, a new Fiat Panda, a 1984 Porsche 911 and a Triumph 2000 saloon, which I bought for my girlfriend but she doesn't like. And I have some motorcycles. Having a Rolls-Royce Corniche is quite baroque and a bit preposterous, and it's full of things I don't normally like, such as wood and leather, but I like Rolls-Royces and I can't afford a new one.'
Not that May is averse to modern machinery: the Eurofighter Typhoon he flew at over 1,300mph for James May's 20th Century is perhaps the most advanced vehicle on Earth - and he preferred the experience to flying a Spitfire. 'The Eurofighter smells like a new Ford Focus; the Spitfire smells like a workshop. It's oily and dusty, it vibrates, it's scuffed, the exhaust fumes come in through the canopy. The sun burns the side of your head, but your feet are freezing...
'Since I was five, I've wanted to fly a Spitfire, but it's nothing like I thought it would be. People talk about "the evocative, creamy roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin", but when you're inside the actual mechanism, which let's not forget is a piece of Thirties British metalwork directly bolted to the airframe, everything it does is directly transmitted to your backside and your fingers. When it's throttled back on the runway, it sounds like someone's hitting it with a sledgehammer.'
The Captain Slow epithet doesn't really apply any more, does it? May is actually one of the fastest drivers in history, having steered a Bugatti Veyron to 253mph. 'Not many people have done that; most Veyron owners haven't,' he says. 'They even keep a special little book of people who have.
'What I found weird about it, and this will seem absurd, is that 253mph feels a lot faster than 200mph. I've done 200 quite a few times. At 250, it suddenly gets to the point where things are happening faster than you can process the information. By the same token, when I dropped down to 70mph it felt so slow that I almost opened the door, thinking, "Oh, I'll just get out and walk while it rolls to a halt." The other interesting thing is how easy it was - you just keep your foot down until a little display tells you that you've reached maximum speed. I think it even went bing-bong.'
Spitfire pilot, Bugatti driver, wine aficionado, ladies' man, history buff, classically trained musician... it's starting to sound like May is actually a Renaissance man. Wasted on television, you might say. With Parliament falling apart, is it time for May to help the country out in its hour of need? 'Stand for Parliament? God, no. Jeremy's threatened to do that, and we don't agree on anything. For what it's worth, I've always believed that society should have as few rules as possible, rather than the thousands of new regulations this Government churns out every week.
'In May's Britain, there'd only be one law: don't be a prat. That actually covers everything. Not paying your tax is being a prat. Neglecting your kids is being a prat. Doing 100mph through a town centre is being a prat. As long as you're not a prat, you can do what you like.' May wouldn't actually put anyone against the wall in his regime, 'but there'd be a lot of rockbreaking to be done. I think Fred the Shred can break a few rocks. So can quite a lot of the Cabinet.'
May does have a combative streak, make no mistake. Of Oz Clarke he says, 'If you whacked him with a cricket bat, he'd be saying something about the flavour of the wood as he went down.' On Autocar magazine, he once hid a message among the drop capitals of a feature that read, 'So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It's a real pain in the a**e.' He was swiftly fired. But can it really be true that he once shot his mobile phone?
'Yes. It made annoying noises. Digital stuff is my technological blind spot. I got so cross that I got my Beretta, took it into a field and blew it to bits.' Hang on, you've got a Beretta? In Hammersmith? 'Doesn't everyone? "A Beretta is better", as they say. I can get you one if you want. I'm talking about a shotgun here, not a pistol, and very, very securely locked away in accordance with all regulations.
'If technology annoys you, I highly recommend shooting it to death. It's very cleansing. I've been tempted to shoot the dashboards of many cars. There was a Saab I wanted to shoot for making a bong noise. The Aston Martin says "Power, beauty, soul" when you put the ignition key in: that deserves both barrels. Left to my own devices, a lot of stuff would get shot.'
I hadn't seen that bonus footage, i will post the final cut of the above in the car and bike racing thread. I also have a Travis Pastrana (freestyle motocross) film to upload which I think you will like, it shows his attempt at the worlds first double backflip on a motorbike.
Jeremy Clarkson faces row over new Gordon Brown slurs Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson risks ire after making more offensive comments about the prime minister Leigh Holmwood and Chris Tryhorn
guardian.co.uk,
24 July 2009
Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is facing new controversy after making more offensive comments about the prime minister, Gordon Brown, two weeks running in front of the hit BBC2 show's studio audience. Clarkson, who previously had to apologise to the prime minister in February after calling him "a one-eyed Scottish idiot", is understood to have described Brown as a "cunt" in not-for-broadcast comments to the studio audience during the recording of this week's Top Gear programme on Wednesday night.
At the filming of the previous week's Top Gear, on Wednesday 15 July, Clarkson also called Brown a "cunt" as part of a joke he made in front of the studio audience, one person present told MediaGuardian.co.uk. This remark was not included in the transmitted version of the show on Sunday, 19 July. The BBC2 controller, Janice Hadlow, was present at the second recording this Wednesday and is said to have confronted Clarkson about the remark.
A BBC spokeswoman confirmed that the pair had a "conversation", but said the issue was now over. "There was a discussion about the programme," she said. "It is certainly not an ongoing issue." It is understood that Hadlow did not ask Clarkson to apologise for the incident. In a further statement, the BBC said: "Janice went to watch a recording of Top Gear as it is BBC2's top-rated programme, and as controller of BBC2, she holds both the programme and Jeremy in high regard. After the recording, she and Jeremy had a discussion about the programme as controllers and presenters often do." Downing Street declined to comment.
Clarkson is currently in Belfast, where he is filming for Top Gear in the city's new sewer system. His manager had not returned calls before publication.
Top Gear in America's redneck country Of all the hair-raising escapades in the show, being chased by murderous Alabamans was the scariest says presenter in new book
Richard Hammond
6th October 2009
Traditionally, the question asked of me when I meet anyone for the first time has been: “So what’s the best car you’ve ever driven?” Recently there’s been a change, the new question running thus: “Did you really [insert ridiculous moment from Top Gear] or was it made up for the telly?” And for roughly a quarter of a year, maybe more, the new question was: “Were you really chased out of town by those American rednecks, or was it made up for the telly?” In the programme in question, we wanted to know if it was possible to buy a car and drive across a chunk of the USA for less money than the cost of traditional “fly-drive” schemes offered by holiday companies.
It’s a pretty lengthy story, but in the course of our trip, by way of an entertaining diversion to keep up our spirits during an especially lengthy drive, we had devised a plan whereby we would each try to get the others killed.
We would each decorate the others’ vehicles with slogans we felt might stir up the feelings of the locals, cause maximum discomfort to each driver and raise a laugh for the viewer at home. And so, in a broad, dusty lay-by at the side of a road leading to Alabama, we parked up and set to with the paintbrushes, spray cans and stencils.
On the side of Jeremy’s ageing, beaten-up Trans Am I painted the legend, “Country music is rubbish”. Jeremy had adorned the flanks of James’s 1970s Cadillac with “Hillary for president” and “Nascar sucks”. I laughed at the slogans with Jeremy as we stood under the tall, smooth-barked trees and sheltered from the southern sun. James was still finishing the lettering on the side of my white pick-up truck and I didn’t want to spoil the moment by peeking before his work was done. Eventually, with a confident flourish of the brush, and a grin, James indicated that he had completed his masterpiece. We stepped up and surveyed. Along the side of my truck James had painted just four short words: “Man love rules OK”.
Well, fair enough: it was perhaps the strongest of our three examples of automotive artwork, but nevertheless, we all felt that we would cause, at worst, a ripple of offence no deeper than that which might be generated among the residents of Cornwall by three visitors driving their cars through Truro with “Cream teas are rubbish” painted down the sides.
We covered three miles before being placed in genuine fear for our lives. Things started well enough. Our convoy included the three cars being filmed, and, naturally, the cars and jeeps carrying the film crew and their equipment. It was a very hot day and every vehicle travelled with windows down and its occupants’ elbows out — not least James’s, since Jeremy and I had disabled his air-conditioning system with a crowbar at a campsite the previous evening.
After just a mile or two, we spotted a road sign telling us we were in Alabama, and we pulled over to film it. The sign was riddled with bullet holes. And not the pathetic little air-rifle pellet holes you might occasionally see in the UK; this thing was peppered with shotgun blasts and a few larger, gaping wounds inflicted, I could only imagine, by slugs from high-powered hunting rifles. We were definitely not in Cornwall.
A mile or so later, we pulled into what Jeremy seemed keen to call a “gas station”. The crew cars pulled up in a line to one side of us. As I rested a hand on the hot metal of the petrol pump nozzle and readied myself to heave it up and slot it into the car, a movement across the forecourt made me stop. A woman — presumably a local — was walking towards us.
She had a long, rangy frame and looked to be made of wire and gristle underneath the plaid shirt and jeans. Maybe 50 years old with yellowing hair and brown teeth. “Y’all queers trying to see how long you can last in a hick town?” “Ah, er . . .” I looked across at Jeremy, who was staring at her. James was frowning. There was more movement around us on the forecourt now. Trucks were arriving and in the back of them I saw the broad backs and cowboy hats of what I could only imagine were more locals. Where they had sprung from, I had no idea. But I saw they were all carrying guns, propped up against their feet. “No, look, we’re both married. Got kids. Just travelling through.”
I pointed at Jeremy on the other side of a fuel pump. “Yup,” he chimed in. “Got kids, and just travelling through.” An enormous man had come out of the station building now, to stand in the middle of the forecourt. He wore the regulation blue denim overalls, plaid shirt and work boots of a cartoon character and looked like you couldn’t stop him with a train. In an unexpectedly high voice, he started to count. “Ten. Nine . . . ”
The crew cars were actually coming under attack now. A group of locals had assembled in a ragtag line and were throwing rocks at them. I heard them land loudly against the sides of the kit van, and watched as those members of the crew who had decided to brave the heat for the promise of a cool drink in the petrol station ran back to their cars.
“Er, Hammond . . . ” James had come into view, and just as he stepped up, I could see over his shoulder Jeremy’s blue Trans Am fire up and head for the road with a screech of tyres. “I need a jump-start again, I’m afraid.” The battery on James’s gargantuan Caddy had faded over the previous two days and it had become a matter of routine to pull up alongside him in my pick-up, hoist the bonnet, hook up the jump leads and give his car a boost to get the creaky old engine turning.
“Seven . . . ” “Shit! Not now.” But there was no choice, so I said, “Right, you get ready. I’m coming over.” The Caddy was about 20 yards away across the forecourt and James ran back to it. By the time he had reached it, got in and pulled the bonnet release, I was parked alongside.
“Five . . . ” I leapt out of the truck, pulling the bonnet release on the way, and grabbed the jump leads as James thrust them towards me.
“Three . . . ”
The hail of rocks onto the crew vehicles was intensifying as the drivers came to their senses, started up and retreated. “Get in, James. Turn it over.” The old Caddy gave a heave and the engine made a couple of wheezing turns before it caught and fired up.
“Two . . . ”
“Go, go, go!” More rocks landed around us as we pulled away. Grabbing third gear and keeping my boot nailed to the floor to squeeze every last ounce of go from the truck as our retreat gained pace, I saw the trucks from the garage pulling away.
In the back of each, sitting square against the sides of the pick-up bed in sombre lines, the rednecks toted their shotguns, thin black barrels bristling straight up at the sky. Amid the tense squabble of English voices from our team, crackling across the CB, I also heard the slow drawl of a local. “They’re comin’ up past here. We’re at the crossroads.” And: “I can see them here, too.” They were using their CB radios to track us. And I was suddenly very aware that television cameras and business cards would not protect us from guns.
I didn’t want to wake up tied to a tree, being invited to squeal like a little piggy for the entertainment of a 20-year-old psychopath in giant dungarees, with three teeth in his head and a bitter hatred of anyone who wasn’t also a 30-stone homophobic racist who shot at things he didn’t understand.
A few miles down the road, conscious that we were easily identifiable to the hordes of rednecks being warned of our approach over the CB, we pulled over. We had seen them waiting at crossroads as we passed, and heard them telling people further ahead that we were coming. We had to try to remove the slogans that had caused offence of an intensity way beyond what we had anticipated.
Our wheels had barely stopped turning before key members of the crew threw themselves out of their vehicles and ran over to the three presenters’ cars, tore off their T-shirts, soaked them in water and began wiping frantically at the painted words. I joined them, and when we ran out of bottled water we used soft drinks instead, ripping the tabs off the cans and pouring the contents onto T-shirts before continuing to scrub at the stubborn paint.
The fear slowly subsided as we drove out of Alabama. But we kept going. And months later, the new question is still asked of me: “Did that really happen in America at the petrol station, or did you make it up for the telly?” Well, yes, it really happened. You didn’t even see the half of it. Oh, and if you were wondering about the answer to the question that preceded the new question, the best car I’ve driven is my worthless old Land Rover, across a field, with two dogs, my daughters and my wife in it, all heading for a picnic and a lazy afternoon.
Extracted from Or Is That Just Me?, to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson tomorrow, priced £18.99. Copies can be ordered for £16.14, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135
Next week
‘I saw my crash unfolding again before me. And I died again in my mind and knew again the moment of certainty when all that can come is the end’
Top Gear stunt which saw airship flying over airport exposed as a carefully orchestrated fake
2nd December 2009
A stunt on Top Gear has been revealed as a fake by the people who helped to stage it. On Sunday's episode of the BBC Two programme, host James May took part in a sequence in which he flew a caravan airship across Britain. Millions of fans watched in awe as May, 46, appeared to accidentally stray over Norwich airport, apparently provoking police intervention.
Later in the show he was pictured crashing to the ground in the airship shouting "Mayday Mayday" in panic after the craft was dragged across the ground. But yesterday professionals involved in the segment gave a rather different version of what happened, compared to what viewers saw at home - calling the sequence a "set-up". The caravan has been a foil for hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and May for years on the programme.
Sunday's adventure saw long-haired May travel in one of the mobile homes customised to become a cockpit for a zeppelin-style balloon. Viewers were given the impression the craft was flown solely by the host and it had been a journey done in one complete session - as Hammond had to race him to a camp site in a Lamborghini.
In one part of the film as the caravan strayed over Norwich Airport, May started panicking and a police helicopter was called to circle the airship. But those involved said the whole thing had actually been carefully planned months before. They claimed show producers had got clearance from the airport to stage the scene and a private helicopter firm provided the "police" chopper.
Steve O'Brian, Chief Pilot at Sterling helicopters, who supplied the 999 helicopter even claimed the balloon turned up at the airport on the back of a truck. He said: 'The whole event was set up, it was all arranged more than a month before it was filmed. The programme had been completely scripted, there was no real emergency - we were hired to play along. There would be no way someone would be able to fly over the country unless it was all staged. The balloon turned up at Norwich airport on the back of a truck, it did not fly there - I saw them set it up. They had been doing various filming around the country before the lorry turned up in Norwich.'
A source at the airport, who refused to be named, confirmed the visit by the Top Gear crew had not been quite as spontaneous as viewers may have been led to believe.He said: 'Obviously the whole thing had to be cleared first. There was a lot of work that went in to clearing the operation.'
A spokesman for Norfolk Constabulary said show makers had told them about their plans to film and confirmed that the police had not been called to deal with May's flight over the airfield. He said: 'We did know the event was going on, we were warned a couple of months prior. No emergency helicopter was sent to the scene by us.'
And May appeared wasn't alone in the flying caravan, but was helped fly the airship by professional pilot Chris Sanger-Davies. He said: 'Much of the sequence of events was scripted, and I was behind the controls for all the tricky manoeuvres. It wouldn't have been safe for James May to have been flying the airship on his own. Let's just say that a lot of the episode was pre-planned.'
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I'm disgusted and quite probably horrified too...
I was one of those 'in awe' as the scenes were shown. Though I think they're mistaking 'mild Sunday night interest' with something more impressive!
I thought this part was set up as I was watching it, it would have been in the paper if they had been in trouble with the police. The other week when James' dacia was hit by the truck, I'm sure that was also set up, doesn't stop the show being good entertainment. I do sometimes wish they would focus more on the cars than the clowning around, last week they had the new Lamborghini Gallardo Valentino Balboni and didn't put it round the test track.
Say it with a bumper sticker Much as we've all come to revile it, I suppose the "I slow down for horses" bumper sticker was of some value when it first appeared.
By James May
11 Jun 2010
Since the vast majority of people have got more sense than to have anything to do with horses, and live in the modern city, it's therefore possible that many of them didn't know how to approach one on the road. You might have thought, before the rear window of a Discovery set you right, that you should sound the horn to warn of your approach, accelerate hard past the brute to minimise the time it is exposed to the trauma of its metal successor, and then fire an athletics starting pistol out of the window to be absolutely on the safe side.
The problem, though, is with the use of the first person. The "I" turns what is otherwise an acceptable and perfectly reasonable appeal on behalf of a cause or special interest group (or however it is these bloody people talk) into a thinly disguised boast about the moral rectitude or social superiority of the stickee. The same is true, come to think of it, of those fatuous stickers that say things like "Glider pilots do it silently" or "I'd rather be surfing". Well off you go then. I'd rather be in the old 911, and your badly driven smog-belching clapped-out VW Transporter is spoiling it for me.
I don't moor a smelly old trawler in the Cornish swell and then display a flag reading "I'd rather be giving it the berries on that windy bit of the old A40 between High Wycombe and Oxford".
Now the other day, I found myself driving along behind a Toyota Previa with a sticker in the back window that read, very largely, "I make room for cyclists". Well done, I thought. We know from the Play of Everyman that only good deeds will accompany us to the grave, but it wasn't much of a legacy. Most people do, I reckon. I ride a bicycle sometimes, and so far people have left me a bit of a gap. But I suppose there must be one or two who either haven't realised that a bicycle must occupy some space in the cosmos or are too rude to accommodate them. In which case this appeal on behalf of cyclists is reasonable. It should read "Please make room for cyclists".
But "I"? I had to follow this car for quite a way, and after a while it really began to annoy me. What is the implication here? That I, because I haven't put a similar sticker in my car, must be one of these people who smears bicyclists along railings? I ended up wondering if drivers these days must automatically be guilty of any wrongdoing they don't actively deny.
So when I got home, I set to work on the computer to make my own sticker. It occurred to me that there are people out there dodging their income tax. But not me. I've always paid up on time, and I thought I'd better make that completely clear to other road users. Eventually I settled on "I have nothing to fear from the Inland Revenue". It looked quite good. But just as I was about to stick it in the Fezza, I hesitated. I might effectively be saying that the police, on the other hand, fill me with dread. There's nothing in my sticker to make it absolutely and unequivocally a matter of record that I haven't murdered anyone.
So I went back to my desk and had a bit of a rethink. I was about to print out "I have nothing to fear from any forces of law and order" when, again, something stayed my hand. What about old girlfriends? What's to say I didn't beat them? Not this sticker, so I probably did. I soon realised that exonerating myself of all possible blame was going to make my car look like a fly-posted telephone exchange box. It simply isn't possible, not when you haven't really done anything very bad.
I would have to cover every damaging assumption made about me by the driver of the Previa, should he end up behind me – except the one about not nicking any sweets from the village shop in 1975, because I did. The only solution would be a single sticker that covered everything that he or anyone else might claim in their rear window, even if it becomes fashionable to proclaim "I pull over for ambulances" or "I wave at train drivers".
It took a while, but I think I've got it. If enough of you are interested, I'll put my new car sticker into mass production.
Wildebeest, tortoise, hamster and The Stag... Hyundai pokes fun at Jeremy Clarkson & co with 'Top Deer' adverts
By Carol Driver
18th June 2010
It’s the Top Gear presenters as they have never been seen before. In two new Hyundai adverts poking fun at the BBC2 programme, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond appear as a wildebeest, a tortoise and, rather fittingly given his nickname, a hamster.
‘Top Deer’ pulls out all the stops, echoing the show’s videography, theme music and test drives for its Tucson Lx35 commercials.
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