Former ‘Top Gear’ Host James May Criticizes Fans Of The Show Who Have Called For Him, Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond To Be Reinstated Since Andrew Flintoff Crash

Max Goldbart

22 November 2023 at 4:27 am·2-min read

Former Top Gear host James May has criticized the “car show-erati” who have called for him and his fellow former co-presenters to be reinstated on the hit motoring show since Andrew Flintoff’s crash.

Speaking to the BBC, May said he has been annoyed by “the people who watch car shows and were saying, ‘Well now they’ve done that wrong you can come back in and rescue [Top Gear].“

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May referred to these “partisan” Top Gear fans as the “car show-erati.”

“I was just thinking, ‘The bloke has hurt himself very badly in a life-changing way and you could perhaps not use it as an opportunity to be partisan’,” said May of these fans. “You could perhaps say, ‘Rotten bit of luck, get well soon’.”

May was speaking on a trailed BBC Today podcast, which will be out in full tomorrow, a day after the BBC said Top Gear will be rested for the “foreseeable future.” The announcement came months after Flintoff’s crash that caused “life-alteringly significant injuries” and led to a payout of £9M ($11.3M) by BBC Studios to him along with a health and safety review.

May and his co-presenters hosted Top Gear for 12 years but left in 2016 following Clarkson’s alleged assault of a producer. The trio have since helmed five seasons of a similar format, Amazon Prime Video’s The Grand Tour, which pivoted from Season 4 onwards to focus more on travel.

“A bit of a rethink”

If Top Gear were to return, May said the show “does need a bit of a rethink.”

“Since we left, Top Gear has followed a similar format and framework to the way we left it,” he added.

“There must be another way of doing a show about cars that will perhaps embrace more fulsolmely many of the questions that are being asked about cars that weren’t being asked for a long time.”

May said his Grand Tour team had “monolopolized” the “big boy adventures” car genre, but that the new Top Gear could be more journalistic, “philosophizing in an entertaining and informative way.”

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“A bit of a rethink”

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