Jeremy Clarkson explains ending TV partnership with Richard Hammond, James May

Jeremy Clarkson has shed light on why he decided to end his longstanding partnership with Richard Hammond and James May.

The trio began their journey together on BBC’s Top Gear in 2002 and later transitioned to Amazon’s Prime Video for the series The Grand Tour, which premiered in 2021.

However, the upcoming special of the car show, titled One for the Road, will mark the end of their on-screen collaboration. Clarkson, currently experiencing significant success with Clarkson’s Farm, has spoken about why he chose to part ways with Hammond and May.

“After 36 years of talking about cars on television, I’m packing it in because I’m too old and fat to get into the cars that I like and not interested in driving those I don’t,” he stated in a recent interview with The Sunday Times.

“What this means, of course, is that my 22-year partnership with James May and Richard Hammond is now over. You can see our final road trip together on Amazon Prime very soon. It’s emotional.”

Clarkson mentioned that the trio had “thought long and hard about how we should end our 22-year partnership, but in the end, we just went to the end of the alphabet” and chose Zimbabwe as the location for the special.

“There was another reason why we chose Zimbabwe,” he continued, revealing, “We would drive across it from east to west, as usual, but then we could cross the border and finish up where we began all those years ago: the Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana.”

Clarkson expressed that it “makes the three of us happy” that their working relationship did not end “in a blizzard of outrage and tabloid headlines,” but instead, it was “landed safely and gently.”

“Was it sad when the director called, ‘That’s a wrap,’ for the very last time? Yes, it was. Especially as some of the crew had been with us when we were there before. People think of Top Gear and The Grand Tour as being James, Richard and me. But it isn’t. We’ve had the same crews for years. We’ve all grown up together.

“We’ve camped together. S*** our lungs out together, laughed our arses off together. These are the guys who really made those shows. They’re the ones who kept the cameras and the microphones going even when it was cold or dangerous, so that Andy [Wilman, producer] had his 1,200 hours of material to sift through.”

Earlier this year, it was announced that Clarkson, Hammond, and May had dissolved their production company, declaring solvency and appointing a liquidator to “wind up” their business.

The final Grand Tour episode is set to air on Amazon Prime Video on 13 September.

Source: The Sunday Times