Richard Hammond has suggested that there may no longer be a public “appetite” for Top Gear, if he, Jeremy Clarkson and James May were launching the show today.
The presenter, who co-hosted the hit BBC motoring series between 2002 and 2015, suggesting that Top Gear’s popularity at the time had been driven by an impermanent interest in the show’s core formula.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Hammond attributed much of his initial success in television to luck and fortunate timing.
“There was an appetite for that at the time,” Hammond said. “And you get appetites with TV. At the moment, people are enjoying famous people doing stuff – like me doing this workshop.” (The presenter currently hosts Richard Hammond’s Workshop on Discovery+, in which he operates a classic car restoration and repair business.)
Recalling the period of Top Gear’s success, he continued: “At that time there was an appetite for a big car adventure show featuring three misshapen idiots. It was a little insight into the way the average male brain works. If we launched it now, there might be none.”
Pressed on whether he really thought the public would no longer go for such a programme, he responded: “I don’t know. It’s a completely different time, isn’t it?”
During the era of Clarkson, Hammond and May, Top Gear was one of the BBC’s biggest TV shows. The trio departed the show in 2015 following a scandal in which Clarkson was found to have assaulted a producer. They subsequently hosted the rival motoring show The Grand Tour for Prime Video.
Top Gear continued after the departure Hammond and co, with various other presenters taking the reins. In 2022, presenter Andrew Flintoff was involved in a near-fatal car accident during filming that caused the show to go on hiatus.
The BBC announced earlier this year that Top Gear is set to return to the air in a rebooted version, with new presenters yet to be announced.
Asked about the reboot in the Telegraph interview, Hammond replied: “The BBC will bring it back because it’s an old brand, it predates us by decades [the series having originally debuted in 1977].”
Hammond’s daughter, Izzy, currently works as a presenter on the online motoring channel DriveTribe.
Speaking about the hypothetical possibility of Izzy presenting on the BBC’s revamped Top Gear, Hammond replied: “Yeah, I’m sure she would [fancy it].
“It’d be good to see some females on those shows. Because half the world is female. Half the drivers are. TV has a role to play in representation. It’s important, nobody’s going to step into an arena unless they see somebody that represents them.”
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