For reasons that are still unclear, Richard Hammond and I decided to revisit the old Top Gear office—the place where we spent an alarming number of years faffing about in the name of car-based television. It’s been nearly a decade since we were last here, although now it feels like yesterday.
Try my gin: https://jamesmaysgin.com/TopGear
Check out my merch: https://jamesmaysgin.com/Merch
Follow me on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/jamesmaygin/
Keep an eye on @Drivetribe for more videos of Hammond and May at Dunsfold 👀
Try my gin: https://jamesmaysgin.com/TopGear
Check out my merch: https://jamesmaysgin.com/Merch
Follow me on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/jamesmaygin/
Keep an eye on @Drivetribe for more videos of Hammond and May at Dunsfold 👀
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Hello viewers of Top Gear on the interweb net. Well, that is the old Top Gear studio and
00:08that
00:09Is the old Top Gear green room?
00:12Yes, where we assembled worked on scripts had arguments. I feel funny. I feel funny as well. Really odd
00:20I
00:21Hadn't been here since the last time I was here. I was leaving after the last studio record
00:26I was a bronze Land Rover and I set off and thought well that was that I know we're gonna do this
00:32It's gonna be weird. It is gonna be weird. It might be a bit
00:36Traumatizing, but okay, we're gonna do it. We're gonna look around the old green room
00:39It may not it wasn't in very good condition when we had it was horrific. It may be I doubt it's improved
00:45I doubt it very much. This is the same slightly boggy grass. Yep. I used to park there usually unless you had
00:53Yes, we did park along here
00:57Oh
00:58My god, this was a massive part of our lives. Is it a long time? Yes, it is a jar
01:05This is all probably dangerous
01:09Good grief, are you sure?
01:15It doesn't open because of this mat, I
01:19Know I've shut it, but it won't open because it won't open on that mat. We can't go in
01:25We can walk through there where we used to put what we called the Spitfire table, yeah, but we sat outside in the summer
01:32drank mugs of tea and coffee
01:35It's also where as I recall
01:38Along here is where one used to stand to go for a wee before going on. That's right. Yes, this was it
01:44That pillar is so well anyway, you know, is it wasn't some stuff dumped under here
01:54Not anymore
01:58It never seemed glamorous and it it really wasn't was it
02:03God, I've forgotten about those curved windows. They used to fill with flies. Did we use a script in there? Yeah
02:13That looks incredibly flimsy and dangerous
02:20Isn't this this one's open
02:24I've completely forgotten that this door was here. Yeah
02:35Whoo, I'm sort of half expecting this to fall down when I
02:40Very strange is it? Yeah. Oh god
02:47Smells the same terrible God it does doesn't it? Yeah. Oh
02:52Yeah
02:54This is where we this is this is the green room a bit down here. I think that was full of junk. Yep
03:01God
03:02Yeah
03:03Do you remember the production tables used to be there? Yeah with computers and stuff
03:10It's weird it seems like only yesterday but also a hundred years ago
03:14Was this here or has this been added? I think that's been added. This was our sort of
03:20Green room, wasn't it? Wasn't this our space? There are sofas in here
03:24Yeah, there was there was a sofa there. We'd sit here and we'd have a script before we went in
03:28Remember we do a run through here. We'd read through
03:32Armchair there
03:34Two sofas a computer here. Yeah, and we'd rewrite scripts and work on it
03:38Yeah, and we'd rerun the news that we'd already thought up but then change it
03:45So I generally used to sit on this end and you would sit there
03:49And then the time would be getting closer to go out audience would be gathering
03:54We'd go out and have some lunch wouldn't we bring that in and sit down and eat it and
03:59Still keep going just going through the script again and again and again
04:03And they'd be waiting
04:05It's genuinely really strange. I feel are both 10 years old and
04:12110 years old. It's that sense of feel like a little boy
04:17But an old man
04:20Buddy, I'll every week we'd come here every week for years and years and years
04:28Or collected flies in here
04:29there was always thousands of flies in there and then we'd see
04:33The cars going past with the style and reasonably priced car doing a practice and you think about the show
04:38You'd think what was in it
04:39you'd think if you had a really good film that you were pleased with in it or
04:43There'd be a tricky bit in the news that you'd be dreading or a really long
04:46Complicated link that had a lot of stuff to remember and you thought oh
04:50wrong
04:51The auditors gonna get bored and it used to go slightly quiet in here because we were all sitting there thinking, right?
04:56I've got to remember that I've got to remember to do that bit. Did we get anxious before we did the shows?
05:00I can't remember. I think we did but we got used to it and that was just the way our lives were
05:08Anxiety riddled they were yeah. Yeah, it was
05:12Tell you what's gone. That was I think there the poster of it. So the taxidermy poster. Yes, that was here, wasn't it?
05:20and the other thing which I still have at home is the poster that was on that door a picture of the Marines saying
05:25How about a nice big cup of shut the fuck up? I?
05:29Think this is more nostalgic than going back to your old school because we were here as adults and we remember more
05:34Yes, we were also here longer than we were at any
05:37School. Yeah longer than our entire school career. Yeah. Yeah
05:42I
05:44Sitting here for the read-through
05:47And then sometimes just rewriting stuff completely and changing or dropping stories or adding stories
05:52Or there'd be a car that we knew we'd have in the studio, but that we hadn't seen it
05:56I remember it happened with the new when the Mercedes CLS came out, you know the curvy one
06:01Yeah, I mean we'd made up some joke about it. And then when we saw we thought that's really great
06:07Yeah, we had to completely redo that segment. So we'd arrived
06:11Grab a breakfast. Yeah, I know whatever the coffee sit in here and start a read-through
06:17Yeah, then we go into the studio. In fact, we're going to see you to block it through for cameras
06:21Yeah, then we'd come back and carry on reading through then we'd go into a rehearsal
06:26Then we'd come back and read through some more and have some lunch and lunch
06:29Yeah
06:29the audience would file in and
06:31Then there'll be that awful moment where the sound man appeared in the door. Yeah microphone's going on and
06:37Then we'd be fed to the lions. Yeah
06:42And then after we'd done it come back out here strip your mic off
06:47Quick debrief
06:49If it was summer, we'd hang around out there. Yeah, the spitfire tape used to call it green plastic thing
06:55And then the long drive home or eventually for you and me flying home in that same Hollywood helicopter. I mean today
07:02Wow
07:04It's
07:09One of those places I suspect does inhabit my dreams sometimes something about
07:15proportions little details
07:17Little bits that you know, your brain has revisited like these windows that actually I was thinking that looking at that warped bit
07:24Which was always warped and a bit knackered and also inevitably because it's the most evocative sense the smell of this is slightly
07:32Traumatizing. Mm-hmm. And what what does it smell? It smells of old mattresses. It's a sort of a damp musty building
07:39It's really a yeah down student days
07:47We used to open this on a
07:50Sunny day. Do you think if I open this we will step through a portal and be back in whenever it was
07:552000 or the door will fall off. It's one of those isn't it?
08:01I
08:07Will the wall will fall out
08:11Everyone look around the rest of it
08:15To go to the side I sort of want to find something that we left here
08:20hope ambition
08:22youth youth vigor
08:25energy I
08:27Think that wall has gone up. I don't think I don't think that was there was this here when we were here
08:35Don't know that writing looks familiar
08:41Originally there was a load of stuff on that wall
08:43This was I'm sure this is a these keys with a problem that says do not lose
08:49Probably probably
08:56Quite often we go down those steps to go. Yeah to the studio. It'll all be waiting in there
09:06Actually what we used to do was come out here or
09:09To the windows in the next bit and watch the queue going in and decide whether or not we liked the look of them
09:15Yes, because where did we go for?
09:17studio makeup
09:21That must have been Oh God Michelle's room. Yeah. Yes
09:25Must it must have been here. There must have been another partition or something
09:28No, it's a turn left and then there's a room on the right
09:31And that's where oh god. I remember this bit
09:34This is a shelf room
09:36And it we always had to have it done here where the audience could see you as though a fire
09:40Yeah, and it was like we make up on her
09:44Well, yeah, I'm going to studio lights you have to and we used to I don't know if we can talk about this
09:48We used to play that game. Yes
09:52No, you go you can't
09:56Says the people involved is still alive
09:58There was a that was like a spare room, but we used we made it a sort of doing room for guests
10:05To me to me to dress in here
10:08Please hang a close-up in there. No, that was in Michelle's room
10:11No, is it because I used to come in and say I don't know whether to wear the blue shirt or the green one
10:17The stick had his own room you're right and it was here
10:20Yeah
10:20That was the sticks room because nobody could know who he was so he would smuggle himself in here and change a dress
10:26That was the Stig's room. Definitely
10:29It's actually not quite as bad
10:32Yeah, then then the secret stick. Yeah, this is this is this room
10:36Yeah
10:39Yeah
10:41Do you know that room we were just in?
10:44Not Michelle's room, but the room that we walked through where we used to look out of the window
10:49That is there should be a blue plaque in there because that's where I composed the VW Scirocco song
10:55Well and a day that's benefited us all
10:58So this was Michelle's room was it?
11:00Do you remember there was our trophy cabinet with all the crap trophies that we won because we never won anything important
11:05It was always stupid little know the golden cock in here
11:08And somebody had painted a picture of you and we put it on the wall up there. Do you remember it?
11:13It's had a sort of green background and you had like one
11:16continuous tooth across the front
11:19Excellent
11:20Yeah, we'd have conversations here. There were sofas here
11:25Yeah, there were some servers there and quite often guests if they brought family and things would all yeah
11:31And there used to be some snacks on the table there for guests I guess and through here
11:37That that long bit where we first came in just now. Mm-hmm that used to be full of all our junk
11:44Yeah props and and broken things bits of bumper that had fallen off spare wheels
11:55How the hell did we get away with it for so this is where I sat because there used to be a square like a
12:00rectangle of
12:01Wallpaper tables, you know trestle tables and I sat here with a little plastic Casio keyboard and composed
12:0955 mpg's all yes, I was very pleased with it. And this is where we looked out of the windows at the people filing in
12:21Well, I don't mind saying that has been a genuinely nostalgic experience
12:25Does it know to you feel like it was a few weeks ago? It feels both at the same time
12:30It feels like it was a couple of weeks ago and another lifetime
12:34Yes, one part of it is like a memory of something you read about in a book. Yeah
12:40The memory of a memory as I think Philip Larkin called it
12:44What was he talking about talking? No, he wasn't talking about talking
12:52Got the more nostalgia gin it's wearing off I have as it happens
13:00It's
13:02Not as it's not as decrepit as I thought it would be
13:07In fact, I remember it being in worse Nick than this when we had it. It's not as decrepit in fact as us
13:14No
13:19Weird
13:22Really strange that
13:24You
13:28James yeah
13:30Why don't you carry on reminiscing who was Jason Curtis? Goodbye
13:35And there he lived forever. Was it haunted? Was he real?
13:43Hmm I'm glad I did that and yes another part of me wishes I hadn't
13:54You