Andy Wilman (center) with Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson on the set of The Grand Tour in Poland. Photo: Alamy
Have a nice car to everyone Traveling has to end sooner or later, one way or another. Ideally, you will arrive at your destination on time and in one piece, before finding a neat and secure parking spot, applying the handbrake and locking the car securely.
The worst-case scenario is to drive too long and too far, stalling to an ignominious stop when the engine fails or the wheels come off. But the worst way to finish is, of course, to crash, especially if someone gets hurt or the car is completely written off.
The Grand Tour, Amazon Prime's mega-budget show in which Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond travel the world driving unusual (and sometimes extremely ordinary) cars in unusual places, is no different.
This week it was revealed that the trio had filmed their latest adventure after five episodes. There will be no more tours. The race is over. But Andy Wilman, the show's executive producer and Clarkson's off-screen navigator on almost everything he's done on television since the mid-1990s, including 178 episodes of Top Gear and the now hugely successful Clarkson Farm, insists that's how the journey ends. planned.
The thing is, says Wilman, we don't see it as The Grand Tour, we see it as Top Gear and The Grand Tour, which is why we've been doing this since 2002. The series is now being worked on by people who used to talk about Top Gear on the way to school. It's a compliment, but you're starting to feel your age…”
Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond in Top Gear. Photo: Getty
Coincidentally, news of the Grand Tour's end comes just days after the BBC announced that Top Gear would also be stored in a garage under a carport.” for the foreseeable future” after its last presenter, Freddie Flintoff, was seriously injured in an accident during filming last year. With both programs – the only two in their genre with significant audiences – going off the air, it's a reasonable question to ask about the future of car shows.
“In an ideal world, [the car show] would just be revived like Doctor Who because there's still a lot of love for cars, despite the advent of electric cars, which I don't think will create any television,” Wilman says. , declarative. It's hard to disagree: there is no such thing as an electric head. Top Gear with electric cars is a pretty bleak prospect.
Wilman laughs at the very idea. “This simply wouldn’t happen. All they do is go fast. Designers can do something with their looks, but you're tired of electric cars sounding so whirring compared to a Ferrari engine. And the dashboard is just a big iPad and some plastic. This is fucking terrible. This is the end of looking at a beautiful car interior, everyone will do the same because it is cheap. No noise, such interiors… Where is the car showroom? Where can a person's contribution be celebrated?
Some time after Wilman and the Top Gear gang relaunched the show in 2002, they hit the big time when they realized how much viewers connected with old fireworks. They didn't want to see new supercars every week, but the adorable bunch turning into an adventure after a few miles got a happy response from people – especially people who are vaguely aware of how engines work.
“Cars with engines give you this: they give you characters. They give you weaknesses and idiosyncrasies,” Wilman says. “The Lamborghini Miura was built more or less secretly after work by a team of under-25s, but it is one of the greatest cars of all time. You never hear stories like this about electric cars. Because this is transport, they just scurry around… Damn boring.
Wilman, Clarkson, May and Hammond (their production company is actually called W Chump & Sons Ltd) left Top Gear and the BBC in 2015 after Clarkson hit a producer over a row over the availability of hot food during filming. Wilman then watched “15 minutes” of the new version of Top Gear, hosted by six people including actor Matt LeBlanc and DJ Chris Evans, “before switching off”.
Not because he thought it was terrible, he insists, but because he didn't want to find out whether he thought it was terrible – then he'd have to lie to friends who were still working on it. “The management were obsessed with proving that Top Gear worked without Jeremy, James and Richard. In fact, the 100% embodiment of Top Gear was Jeremy, James and Richard. It's sad that it ended like this.”
In 2006, when Hammond was involved in a life-threatening crash while driving a jet car at 320mph for Top Gear, the team naturally wondered whether to continue the show. . Not for long, however, as Hammond not only recovered but joked about it at awards ceremonies, the footage was shown in the next episode and became a triumphant part of the program's legend. The Flintoff crash “feels different”, says Wilman.
Jeremy Clarkson in The Grand Tour Credits: Ellis O'Brian
“I don’t know the details, but we all know it was long and protracted and the guy suffered terribly. Richard suffered, it was huge, but there seemed to be a different vibe around the events. But what happened to Freddie appears to have been a terrible accident and a terrible recovery. This took away the substance from what was supposed to be an escapist, children's show. And who will take on this work? Show this person some respect.”
So, is it done? “I think it's going to go away for a while and I don't think the BBC has the guts to make another Top Gear. I don't think there is any desire or interest. We've been talking about electric cars, and if the BBC is left-wing, they're not going to say, “Let's have another car show with Ferraris, Lamborghinis and jokes.” They have no desire to do this.”
Wilman, 62, first met Clarkson when they were boys at Repton School in Derbyshire in the 1970s. He's shorter and dresses even more casually, like a roadie (today he's wearing a black Rolling Stones Exile on Main St T-shirt, dark jeans and sneakers), but otherwise he's no different or exactly like Clarkson. also different. “What, I end everything with the words “…in peace”?” he asks in an exaggerated, Clarkson-esque drawl. Not really, but you can tell why they get along.
We're talking in his office and editing room in central London. In one corner is a framed painting by David Icke that reads, “The Earth Needs Rebels!” (bought as a joke to annoy someone) but every other surface is covered with handwritten notes on the planning of Clarkson's farm. He is currently editing the third series. A fourth has just been announced.
Jeremy Clarkson at the Clarkson Farm
“LIZA MUSHROOM MINDING” reads one interesting entry. “SOLUTION TO THE DEATH OF THE PIG,” barks another. I'm afraid someone might be linked to “slaughterhouse” on the same board, but can't be sure. “Well, I won’t give anything away,” Wilman grins.
Clarkson Farm is, of course, an unexpected new chapter in Wilman and Clarkson's already stunningly successful television careers. “There is a lot of joy in the little things. We can say, “Okay, this episode is about the mushrooms that we grow.” This is counterintuitive for people who have been racing cars down exploding ski slopes for 20 years. But it's a real pleasure, and we were very lucky to have our characters – Caleb, Charlie, Alan, Gerald – who were already there.”
Wilman was grateful that the new show provided a distraction after The Grand Tour wrapped filming in Zimbabwe in October, if only to distract him from the end of that era. “There were a lot of tears and we had a big old party,” he says. Apart from May and Hammond, many members of the crew came along with Clarkson and Wilman when they all left Top Gear.
This loyalty was the main theme of the speech Wilman gave after the “downsizing” was last announced. “I said that when people talk about what we've done, there are a lot of huge numbers mentioned—miles driven, hours driven, number of children people have had. But the smaller numbers were the most surprising. For more than 20 years, we had eight cameramen, eight sound engineers, four mechanics. Our dysfunctional family have remained very loyal.”
Former Top Gear presenter Freddie Flintoff Photo: Will Douglas/BBC
Wilman and the presenters had been thinking about stopping it for at least two years, and always wanted to stop while their programs were still well received (“as they were in the last series, in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe,” Wilman says). He notes that too often people don't know when to move on from successful franchises. “Just as people are always promoted to a level above their ability, television commissioners always order too many shows for one show.”
Many factors influenced the conclusion of the case. For example, the world is simply “harder to travel.” They filmed in Ukraine, Myanmar, Israel and Argentina. This is no longer possible, mainly because of conflict, although in the case of Argentina it is more likely that Clarkson and his colleagues have ruthlessly angered that country over the past decade.
Then there is age. Hammond is 53, but everyone else is over 60. “Jeremy said he's not getting any younger, and he's right. It's a whole different thing climbing in shitty nylon tents when you're 63 instead of 40. And at our age, if we're going to do anything else, the time has come.”
He and Clarkson are not good delegators and don't know any other way to work than “at the bottom”, even when they started making millions. Sometimes this means coming up with brilliant format ideas such as The Stig or having celebrities race around the track; sometimes it means walking through the desert or taking a cargo ship across the vast sea to get the experience that people dream about.
But just as often, it means 2 a.m. ends in editing rooms, or Clarkson frantically writing scripts, or everyone struggling with logistical migraines, or marathon meetings with lawyers, or dealing with tabloid attention. (For the record, Wilman “won't talk about Meghan Markle” but will deny Clarkson's incendiary column that she had anything to do with the end of the Grand Tour.)
With his wife Amanda, he has two children, who are now 23 and 19 years old. “I missed sports days and everything. And every cliché is true. I really regret that,” he says. “Amanda wasn’t always forgiving, but I was very protective of Top Gear and the job. There was no balance.”
Scene from the third episode of The Grand Tour Posted by Ellis O'Brian
Now it's like Clarkson's farm. Both he and Clarkson love it: learning a new subject, finding new characters, and all they have to do is walk up the M40 (in the case of Wilman, who lives in south-west London) or out the front door (in the case of Wilman, who lives in southwest London). Clarkson case) filmed. Theoretically, it could work and work. “The seasons have some structure, which is unusual for television.”
Wilman is an outstanding musician, and in our conversation he repeatedly compared Clarkson, May and Hammond to the Beatles. I guess that makes him George Martin. “I’ll take it, I’ll definitely take it,” he says, nodding with mock pride. He likes the idea of continuing for years to come, like the Rolling Stones, but “doing this status quo with a reunion tour every few years? No.” Hammond and May have their own TV projects. Clarkson has a farm. But never say never to a band getting back together. “I just can't imagine us doing it for cars. It's us, but the car programs will be empty for a while.”
He sighs. “Do you think people will miss us?” – he asks suddenly sincerely. There will definitely be emptiness, I confirm. “Yes, I know. But will they miss us? Oh, I say, more than they know.
“Hmm. I'll be okay if they do because we gave it our damn everything. Weight gain, hair loss, accidents, having children… We kind of lived our lives on these shows. You’re always looking for lightning in a bottle, and with these three we had it.”
The Grand Tour will return to Amazon Prime next year
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