The trio, headed by Clarkson, who also writes a column for The Sunday Times and The Sun, will launch new Amazon Prime show The Grand Tour in the autumn.
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Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC, has suggested the corporation should have done more to keep Jeremy Clarkson. I think he’s done really well on Top Gear.
Thompson said this as someone who has experience of clearing up Clarkson’s mess.
TV chef James Martin is poised to get the green light for his dream job – presenting Top Gear.
Over the course of the interview, which has its best parts transcribed in The Guardian, the former boss of the BBC said that Jeremy Clarkson was a “slightly out-of-control talent”, but one that the BBC could “ill afford to lose.” . While Thompson admitted Clarkson often rubs people the wrong way, he said that the presenter attracted viewers to the BBC who didn’t find anything else for them on the station.
A rebooted Top Gear was launched following Clarkson’s departure, fronted by Radio 2 presenter Chris Evans and former Friends star Matt LeBlanc, but ratings were seen as a disappointment.
Thompson said that Evans had done himself no favours on the show by trying to “impersonate” Clarkson.
‘He told me that he’d just called Gordon Brown, who was then prime minister, “a one-eyed Scottish idiot” and a ‘c-‘.
“I don’t care what you say, I won’t”.
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Happily the pair did manage to come to an arrangement in the end; ‘We agreed that he would apologise for calling him “one-eyed”‘.
