big year for Richard, as he also married his sweetheart, Mindy. Later, speaking to Times Online, Hammond made no secret of how excited he was to be on the series: ‘Even when we were recording the first episode and Jeremy said, “Hello, and welcome to Top Gear”, my immediate thought was, “Oh great, Top Gear’s back!” Then I suddenly realised, “Oh s***, I’m on it!”’
Alongside the show’s patriarch Clarkson, Hammond’s other co-presenter was Jason Dawe, a Cornish native who first started selling cars in 1986 when he worked at a local car dealership (including two separate brands crowning him ‘Salesman of the Year’) before graduating to become a sought-after motor industry trainer. After 16 years in the motor trade, he began working in journalism and picked up a reputation for championing consumers, helping them pick their way through the minefield that buying a car can prove to be. Dawe’s participation in the new Top Gear therefore introduced a highly credible and investigative tone to the brash programme. His role quickly took the form of ‘consumer’s champion’ with the more light-hearted features generally being presented by Clarkson and Hammond. However, at the start of the second series of the new generation, Dawe was replaced by James May.
Following the demise of the previous incarnation of Top Gear, May returned to his revered magazine columns. He was barely settled back in his journalist’s chair before the new Top Gear producers called as they were looking for a replacement for Jason Dawe, who was to leave the programme after the end of series 1 in 2002. Despite earlier reservations about being too similar to Clarkson, May was the archetypal British gent: a more cerebral, stylish and pedestrian partner to the firebrands of Clarkson and Hammond. He has since proved the perfect foil for the other two’s more exuberant personalities.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2008, a BBC executive recalled his audition for the new formatted show: ‘James had a 14-year-old Bentley at the time. At the audition he said, “I’ve found out if you spend £50 at Tesco, you get £5 of free petrol. Now I can drive anywhere I like; the problem is my house is full of rotting food!” Everyone in the room laughed, Jeremy laughed. That landed him the job.’
With James May on board, the BBC now had the presenting line-up that would, over time, turn Top Gear into a programme watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world. However, although different to its predecessor in many ways, the new format was not an immediate ratings hit; where the BBC played its trump card was in allowing the show to grow, giving Wilman and his production team the creative freedom and time to produce unusual features while allowing the presenting triumvirate of Hammond/Clarkson/May the opportunity to develop their characters on-screen.
The more caricatured elements of the three characters have only really developed over the span of several series and the show’s ratings have subsequently gone up and up and up … Wilman himself was quoted in the Guardian describing them thus: ‘Jeremy is walk through a door rather than open it, Richard’s a massively accident prone and cheeky chappie, and James is a pedantic nerd.’ This was a formula that quickly proved highly successful: with the dream line-up, a healthy budget and the full backing of the BBC, new Top Gear set about becoming the most-watched and most successful motoring show of all-time.
The Star in a Reasonably Priced Car
From the very first series of the new generation of Top Gear, a brilliant slot was introduced which has since become a TV institution, the so-called ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’. The premise was simple enough: each week, a famous face would take a cheap and cheerful car around the official Top Gear track, with their respective times posted on a lap time board. Initially introduced merely as a fun piece to feature some famous faces, it was also a clever way to segue in guest appearances without the celebrity just crassly plugging their new book or film.
The first-ever ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ was the comedian Harry Enfield. His appearance was pre-empted by Clarkson saying that normally when comedians make the big time, they go out and buy supercars yet Enfield had instead bought a Vauxhall Cavalier Convertible (which was hauled into the studio). He then swapped it for a Rover and this in turn was later exchanged for a Metro. At the time, Enfield was working the same circuit as comedians such as Rowan Atkinson (McLaren F1) and Steve Coogan (Ferrari 355). Inspired by such modest car taste, Clarkson announced the new weekly feature. He revealed that when searching for the ‘Reasonably Priced Car’, Hyundai had refused, so too had Daewoo and Nissan, but then Suzuki said, ‘Have a Liana’ – which was £9,999 on the road. Clarkson described this as the most beautiful car he had ever seen.
First of all, however, Clarkson, Hammond and Jason Dawe all crammed into the Liana to do a lap of the Top Gear track to test out the vehicle. They recorded a time of 1.50 seconds, even with three adults on board. For the celebrities themselves, on the day The Stig would show them the racing lines and coach them around the track before each of them was allowed several attempts at a lap time, although the fastest would be (genuinely) kept a secret until they were interviewed in the studio by Clarkson.
Enfield was not so quick: to this day he remains one of the slowest stars, with a lamentable time of 2.01. To his credit, as the opening ‘star’, he was the fastest guest celebrity on the leaderboard albeit for one week (behind The Stig and the presenters). However, with the very next episode in late October 2002, when supercar collector and accomplished racer Jay Kay of Jamiroquai fame came on the show, it quickly became apparent that for some celebrities this was not just a bit of fun. Kay has a well-documented fleet of supercars and was known to be a talented and naturally fast driver. First off, he chatted with Clarkson about how he felt his love of cars could be traced back to his famous mother’s transient lifestyle (she was the brilliant jazz singer Karen Kay) and how he therefore spent much of his childhood on tour, travelling the UK with her. He then rattled off a dream list of cars that would make most men salivate – a Merc Pullman, Ferrari 550, a Lambo Miura SC and 360 Spider, an Aston Martin DB5, etc.
Then Jay Kay did his lap. Coming the week after Harry Enfield posted such a slow opening gambit, everyone expected Kay to handsomely beat that mark. And that’s exactly what he did: his time of 1.48.3 was only two seconds behind The Stig and came complete with a fancy handbrake turn to finish! Delighted, he punched the air in triumph (notably, this was in front of a sparse studio audience, which in the early series were only placed in front of the presenters’ chairs rather than the latter-day set-up of a 360-degree crowd). Seeing Jay Kay so excited was the moment when ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ became not just an entertaining TV slot, but a national sport.
In the second series, however, ultra-tall supermodel Jodie Kidd astonished everyone by taking three-tenths off Jay Kay’s time, even though she could barely fit in the tiny Suzuki Liana. Perhaps viewers shouldn’t have been surprised as she was in fact a veteran of the ultra-fast American Gumball Rally and even drove a Maserati Spyder at home. She compared driving fast on the lap to being on a horse, in that it gave her the same adrenaline rush. Later, The Stig revealed that in between corners, Kidd could be heard making ‘Giddy up!’ sounds.
The Stig told Clarkson with few notable exceptions, pretty much all the celebs he was coaching were highly competitive and keen to win (he also later revealed that in his opinion the most difficult celebrity was Tara Parker-Tomkinson as he felt she wasn’t a very good listener). However, not all celebrities are so accomplished and much of the fun of this segment is when the celeb driver is utterly useless. The late great Richard Whiteley ambled in at a woefully slow 2.06 – in fact, both he and Terry Wogan were beaten by blind Bosnia war veteran Billy Baxter, accompanied by Clarkson directing him from the passenger seat.
But perhaps the most infamous early
