The Top Gear Story (16 page)

Hammond admits that since he’s appeared on television, he is frequently approached by ‘a certain type of girl’, something he finds hilarious and obviously unappealing: ‘I’m very lucky [my wife] trusts me. But if I wasn’t happily married I’d be on a
non-stop
rampage, exploiting my victory ruthlessly. I’d be on one long, shallow, celebrity-driven shagfest.’

One can only imagine how May and Clarkson would have laughed on hearing the news of the ‘Weird Celebrity Crush’ survey. Others were less surprised. Writing in the
Mirror
, women’s editor Caroline Jones said, ‘With his cheeky grin, his reassuring voice, but most of all that naughty twinkle in his eye, the appeal is obvious. What’s not to love? You don’t have to be interested in motoring to recognise a racy little model when you see one. And he’s certainly got our engines revving.’ Indeed, the fact that Hammond was happily married with two kids and doted on his family made him all the more adorable in many women’s eyes.

Of course there’s a wider issue here: Hammond in particular has made
Top Gear
a programme that women watch. With the greatest respect to Clarkson and May, they are far more improbable sex symbols, something they themselves might readily admit. Suffice to say,
Top Gear
was for many years the motoring equivalent of ‘the football’: ‘It used to be the programme your fella watched while you had a bath,’ wrote Jones, ‘all boring men in cardies banging on about Beetles and BMWs. Now it’s funny and sexy. Richard’s enthusiasm makes you want to understand the difference between oversteer and understeer – even though you don’t care.’

F
or much of the 2000s, James May lived in Hampton, a very genteel town on the outskirts of London, where house prices are exorbitant and there's a tangible whiff of sedate Englishness in the air: so, perfect for him then. He has been with his partner – the dance critic Sarah Frater, who writes revered pieces for such publications as the
Evening Standard
– since 2000. Speaking to the
Mirror
, May described her thus: ‘I like a bit of rusticity in my women. Sarah's an eccentric. She won't mind [that description].'

May appears to represent the quintessential English bachelor, albeit one with a long-term partner: ‘Some people just don't get married and I am a late developer. Sarah and I have never really talked about living together, we just never have. And it's practical. My house isn't terribly big … [in fact] my house is f***ing horrible. Sarah likes to go back to her Notting Hill flat – she's happy how it is. As for children, I don't yearn for them, but I don't rule it out,' he continued.

Speaking to the
Independent
, he admitted to being hopeless about keeping a nice house: ‘I can't make a house homely – my house just looks like a garage or a shed. I'm not untidy, but it just looks so uninviting.' He has since moved to Hammersmith in west London, where his house boasts a garage (unusual for that busy area of the capital). It's not clear where he keeps his fleet of cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes, however.

However, he's not averse to romantic gestures. ‘When we went to Istanbul recently,' he told
The Times
, ‘we were walking near the Blue Mosque one night when a figure in traditional clothes sidled up and whispered, “Make her happy. Buy her carpet.” And then disappeared. He wasn't trying to sell me one, just offering advice. So I asked the owner of the B&B and he suggested a place that had antique rugs at decent prices. I bought a runner with a threadbare patch for twenty quid, and yes, it did make her happy. So thanks, mate.'

The couple share a dog, a rather wild-sounding creature called Fusker, named after a form of internet theft. May describes the mutt as ‘stand-offish and grumpy, just like me.' Fusker was a gift from Hammond's wife Mindy (and Sarah has told him, ‘You get the pet you deserve!'). Like Clarkson, May is not unknown to make fashion faux pas, having been filmed in a selection of numerous questionable sweaters and lurid shirts. He states simply: ‘normal bloke is my style.' This is slightly misleading because he has been known to spend quite a lot of money on clothes, but proudly hails his ability to ‘make them all look rubbish' – this from a man who likes velour and bemoans the extinction of the 1970s' beaded door curtains in cars.

When he's not filming, he loves to relax with Sarah at home, sometimes venturing into the kitchen to cook nice meals, or if he's feeling sociable he prefers to go for a few quiet pints with his mates and play darts down the pub. He is a devoted bitter
drinker and enjoys sampling real ales. If it's raining, he might sit in and watch an old movie, preferring classics such as
The Battle of Britain
or
Where Eagles Dare
.

May's personal garage is maybe not so understated as you might expect. Admittedly, over the years his fleet has perhaps predictably included a Bentley T2, Triumph 2000, Rover P6, Alfa Romeo 164, 1971 Rolls-Royce Corniche, Jaguar XJS, Range Rover, Fiat Panda, Datsun 120Y, Vauxhall Cavalier, a Mini Cooper, Citroen Ami, Mazda MX-5 and numerous classic motorbikes. But don't be fooled by the Captain Slow tag: he has also owned his fair share of supercars such as a Ferrari F430, an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and even the monstrous Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4. Coincidentally, like Hammond, he often uses a Brompton folding bicycle for city commuting.

James freely admits to being what some would call a ‘tinker', a person who loves to mess about with engines and machines: he says he can't walk past a hardware store because it's full of nuts and bolts, tools, penknives and other cool stuff. He once revealed that one night he was happily messing with a piece of an old Honda engine for hours when Sarah popped her head around the garage door to ask: ‘Is there any chance you can come inside and behave like a normal person for a while?'

‘Normal people' also go on holidays, something May has said he's not very good at. However, his globe-trotting escapades with
Top Gear
have clearly made him travel-hardened: ‘I'm not very good at planning them,' he told
The Times
. ‘For years, I used a bucket shop in Kilburn. Whenever I had a week free, I'd go in and say, “What have you got for a hundred quid?” And he'd say, “Cairo, tomorrow”, so I'd say, “Fine”. That's the way I like to travel. You soon learn that unless you're heading for the Arctic or the Amazon, when you arrive there will be toothpaste, toothbrushes and hotel rooms. And if there aren't, well, you can
always sleep on the central reservation. I've done that enough times to know it isn't the end of the world.'

As mentioned earlier, May is also a qualified pilot: ‘Aeroplanes were something I was interested in as a small boy,' he told the
Independent
. ‘I get bad vertigo and I never thought I would be able to afford to do it. I was a bit lucky. I only went down to the airport for a trial – I just kept going and ended up with a pilot's licence.' So he admits that he spends nearly all of his cash on cars, classic motorbikes, planes and fuel. Sounds like the perfect life!

Like his two co-presenters,
Top Gear
has long since stopped being May's only television role. However, his shows are invariably more cerebral than the rather more explosive programmes often made by his counterparts. So, we have him presenting shows such as Lifestyle's Road
Rage School
,
co-hosting
coverage of the 2006 London Boat Show and bizarrely beating Gordon Ramsay at eating animal penises on an edition of the verbally caustic Scottish chef's
The F Word
! Unsurprisingly perhaps, both men ended up being sick. It began as a bit of fun, with Ramsay daring May to eat one and he was so confident that the mild-mannered
Top Gear
presenter wouldn't be able to eat any of these ‘delicacies' that he then offered to match every one himself. Having already stirred up controversy by serving horsemeat on his show, Ramsay didn't shy away from the inevitable headlines.

Although the unlikely duo had great fun together, Ramsay was rather less forthcoming about May's actual cooking skills: ‘The worst [celebrity chef] ever would have to be James May, with his fish pie. Even though he won, which was extraordinary. He was drinking a bottle of red wine throughout the challenge, so I thought it was in the bag. And Geri Halliwell as well – disaster zone! You won't be seeing either of them opening a restaurant.'

However, May's best TV show other than
Top Gear
is easily the
intriguing
James May's Toy Stories
for the BBC, which features classic toys from yesteryear, including some of his personal favourites. But he didn't just look at the toys from his childhood, he super-sized them: he reconstructed the banked track at Brooklands raceway using Scalextric, tried to build a life-size Airfix model of a Spitfire and even submitted a garden to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show made entirely from plasticine. (Note: controversy is never far away from the
Top Gear
presenters: a group gathered outside the BBC to protest at the cost – allegedly £500,000 – of letting a well-paid presenter live out his childhood Spitfire fantasy).

Most notably, May built an entire full-size house from Lego in August 2009 (he was a self-confessed ‘Lego fiend' as a child). The location was Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey and it was estimated that he used 3.2 million bricks to complete the building. Such was his popularity by this point that nearly 3,000 people turned up to see him start the build. Sadly, although Lego themselves hoped to move the house, brick by plastic brick, to their flagship theme park near Windsor, the cost of dismantling and rebuilding was simply uneconomic at £50,000 – even with 1,000 volunteers. James and the
Top Gear
website tried to find a buyer for the house, alas to no avail. A month later, the Lego building was demolished after the wine estate reluctantly had to reacquire the land for its next harvest. It later transpired that a Lego cat, built by a fan and called Fusker in honour of May's own pet, had been stolen from the house by persons unknown.

Sadly, James's attempt to break the longest model railway record failed amid claims that vandals and thieves had tampered with the 10-mile track. It was to stretch from Barnstaple to Bideford in Devon but was broken up in places by thieves and coins dropped on the line destroyed the special battery, which was later stolen.

May explained to the
Daily Mail
that from the age of five he had wanted to fly a Spitfire and eventually he did just that for the episode where he built the life-size Airfix replica. Surprisingly, he found the experience of flying the actual World War II legend unrewarding: the cockpit smelt of oil and dust and he was freezing. Although he said that he much preferred the staggering technology of the Eurofighter, this is a man who admits to a blind spot for electronic technology: he once took his annoying mobile phone into a field and shot it with a Beretta shotgun: ‘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.'

Elsewhere, James has travelled alongside wine connoisseur Oz Clarke for
Oz and James's Big Wine Adventure
: as a confirmed bitter drinker the experience seismically changed his habits and he admits to often phoning Clarke for advice when he's standing in the supermarket wine aisle. It was during one such wine outing with Clarke that May's concert-standard musicianship was briefly exhibited, albeit on the lowly recorder with a troupe of Morris dancers!

Weirdly, James has written one jingle for a major car manufacturer (he is contracted not to say which one), which he composed on a Casio keyboard, waltz-style. On
Top Gear
, his musical tastes are often ridiculed and he certainly hasn't helped himself: after spending several days recording the engine notes of various cars, he played back his awful, atonal version of the show's theme tune on a small ghetto-blaster in the studio to guffaws from both colleagues and audience alike.

He has also presented programmes about the moon landings, sharks, great inventions and science fiction being implemented in real life. Like Hammond and Clarkson, James has also written several very popular books although unlike his co-stars, he has yet to enjoy a No. 1 bestseller.

He says that although he occasionally watches his own performances he prefers not to do too much of this as ‘it's painful' and he is eager not to be over-exposed on TV, telling the
Independent
: ‘I do try to resist the urge to become a tart. I've never wanted to be on television for the sake of it, I suppose because I'm not one of life's natural presenters – I'm not an actor. If my frock isn't blown up by a particular idea, I do turn it down.' The very same journalist reported that May's persona in the flesh was so laid-back, ‘he appears forever on the brink of yawning.' Of course, this is a caricature just as Clarkson's motor-mouth persona is not how he lives 24/7, but that's the nature of blipvert modern TV: it's all about soundbites, snapshots, quick fixes.

James May is lower down the ‘Weird Crushes' rankings than Richard Hammond, but still receives more than his fair share of love letters, despite the loud shirts with pictures of jet fighters on them. Some fans have routed him out at his local pub, leaving gifts, albeit not panties or bras but fruitcakes, a smoked haddock, sweets and spam. His Lord Byron-esque shaggy locks and ramshackle look are a teenage dream he can now indulge. Oddly, when he first joined
Top Gear
, May was asked if he'd mind trimming his shaggy barnet but the haircut is now so synonymous with his TV image that the good folk at the BBC ask him not to cut it off.

In fact, James May is perhaps something of a dark horse in the
Top Gear
stable. Although his fellow presenters may have a more obvious profile, May's quiet, laconic style and passionate interest in his subject matter has made him what the
Independent
calls, ‘the most in-demand presenter on British television.'