The Boys Talk Cars, Amazon VS BBC, And Being Recognised In Syria
Wearing some dapper tuxedos with some tire tread marks across the front and back, Jeremy, James, and Richard showed up for a photoshoot and interview with British GQ. The result? Some interesting behind the scenes info and loads of trademark Clarkson, May, and Hammond wit.
ON THE TOPIC OF CONTRACT RIDERS
Jeremy: “…like jockeys? Oh those blue M&M type things? No, we don’t do riders.”
Richard: “We should do them, it would be really funny.”
ON WHAT THE BOYS ARE DRIVING THESE DAYS
James: “BMW i3 this week (after being accused by Jeremy of driving Ferrari 458 ‘Special Needs’)”
Jeremy: “Volkswagen Golf GTI”
Richard: “Land Rover Defender”
ON BEING NAMED A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
Richard: “It influences my every waking hour. I get up in the morning as that. I eat my cornflakes in that frame of mind.”
Jeremy: “I still stand wherever I am when I’m feeling fortunate in the world, going how on earth did I end up here?”
James: “I do that when I see you standing somewhere… how did he end up there..”
ON THE SUBJECT OF THE GRAND TOUR’S $160 MILLION BUDGET
Jeremy: “No it wasn’t; the Daily Mail said it was a $160 million budget. Wikipedia says it because the Daily Mail said it, and even Wikipedia described the Daily Mail as ‘not a reliable news source.’ Nobody knows how much it was. It was SOME…broadly the same as it was before.”
ON AMAZON VS BBC
Jeremy: “We used to be quite good at annoying everyone at the BBC. You can’t annoy anyone at Amazon because they’re un-annoyable…whereas the BBC would get annoyed if you’re shoes weren’t clean. You know when you leave school and you can suddenly smoke in the street, you think OH.”
ON WHAT THEY LEARNED FROM SERIES 1
Jeremy: “You look back on some things and think ‘I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do that…’ There are one or two things were we look back and think that perhaps we’ll have a rethink in Season 2.”
Richard: “We had to try some stuff; it would be a wasted opportunity if we didn’t. Some of the stuff we carry on, some we didn’t.”
ON BEING RECORGNIZED IN SYRIA
James: “We were a million miles from anything, no one had a telly, and people were still ‘Welcome to Syria, Mr. Slowly.’ “
Jeremy: “It doesn’t matter where we go, everybody seems to know who we are.”
