One for the Road: the end of a Trio, a Ritual and an Era of Television

Last night, I sat down for the last time to perform a ritual I have been performing for most of my life. I can’t tell you when exactly I began this ritual or for exactly how long I’ve been practising it, but I can tell you where it began and whom I began it with. This ritual has been proving harder and harder to perform properly over the years. It shouldn’t be done alone and, if you’ve been practicing for years like I have, you should try as best as you can to perorm this ritual with those whom you’ve been practicing with for years. I would have been no more than nine or 10 when I first started this ritual because my Dad said that something called Top Gear was back on TV. I’m sure having watched the launch of this new silly format which emphasised power slides and mockery of British cars and constant showboating by the lead presenter left an awful taste in his mouth. My Dad is, in many ways, the antithesis to Jeremy Clarkson. He likes Austin Allegros and Morris Marinas. He thinks all BMW’s are driven by tossers (they are), and power slides, drag races and burnouts are for shaved apes, but I on the other hand thought this was great. I was too young to undersatand or remember Quentin Wilson’s consumer savvy price guides and didn’t care. I was a child and wanted to see rubber burning, things moving quickyl, explosions etc. Dad was a bit more placated when James May came along because he liked model trains and delivering technical monologues and from that point on, Sundays at 8pm meant one thing and one thing only - Top Gear. Top Gear was the ritual.

And so, for roughly 10 or 11 years, on Sunday there was a very clear series of actions that made up the ritual. First, home work had to be boxed off and put out of the way, by about 6 o’clock before dinner was served. Once dinner was polished off and the washing was done, it would be somewhere between 7 and half 7. That meant there was time to squeeze in the latter half of Sky One’s 7 o’clock double bill, but really, that was just preamble to the main event. It's difficult to communicate to people who weren’t there at the time how immensely important Top Gear was to my generation of petrol heads. Nowadays, when traditional television isn’t dominant and people’s entertainment habits are based more around personalised algorithmic bubbles fed privately to them through their phone, the concept of families sitting down together in the same room at the same time to watch and discuss the same thing without distraction and without being forced to do so seems so old fashioned I almost picture us wearing knitted wool cardigans and knee socks, but these are some of my fondest memories. Nearly every Sunday at 8pm I would switch on BBC 2 and spend the next hour or so engrossed with the three most hilarious, entertaining and down right stupid people I have ever seen. Dad, my brother and I would laugh at their jokes or at the ensuing chaos that soon became a hallmark of the show as much as we found ourselves in awe of the beauty of the World we got to see through their eyes as well as being left aghast at the demise of Saab with Clarkson and May’s ode to the Swedish car maker. I look back now with a lump in my throat because it wasn’t just a TV show about cars, it was bonding with my Dad and brother as well fostering an interest in life. It was a taste for adventure and exploration and it is fundamental to why today I still mess around with cars with my Dad and brother. If I do it on my own, it’s no fun at all. It’s about having fun with your mates and laughing at things when they go wrong. 

As years rolled by and my skin blew up with acne and my voice went from tenor to a bit more baritone, cars gave way to girls but I had pretty much no luck with that so there was always ritualistic Top Gear on BBC 2 on Sundays at 8pm - the ol’ reliable. At this rate, Top Gear was bigger, more flashy, more ridiculous and destructive than ever before and even the normal people in school were talking about it. This sounds great but actually, backfired on me spectacularly.  At this point in my life I had bought a 1979 Triumph Dolomite with money I had received to put towards my future from relatives for my Confirmation - or is it Holy Confirmation? Or Sacred Confirmation? Whatever it is, I took the money and ran! This happened to be the same time Top Gear aired its British Leyland special in which Hammond drove and derided a Dolomite Sprint. I thought my Dolomite was cool and retro, but, as a result of Hammond’s quips, people laughed at it and ridiculed my own Dolomite (which was not a Sprint) for a long time and I will never let that go, but I couldn’t stay angry, the trio were always there to brighten things up. One night when I was about 14, I was coming back from a friend’s house when I was stopped by some local rival lads. They kicked the crap out of me so I went home and watched Top Gear to cheer myself up. 

We all know what happened when the Top Gear presenters became the Grand Tour presenters so there’s no use delving back into it, but Clarkson, Hammond and May had a new home. There was no longer a set time and place to watch what they got up to because they, along with most television, had moved to streaming. I don’t think I’ve ever watched the Grand Tour with my Dad or brother and now I never will (not a new one anyway) because it stopped being a certain time and place thing and so life wormed its way in so that we caught a new special whenever and wherever we got the chance. Now the acne on my face is gone along with my lucious head of hair and I live elsewhere with my wife who has been glued to the Grand Tour ever since James May drove into a tunnel in Norway. It’s sad to let go of this sacredly held ritual that I’ve been carrying out now for 22 years of 28 years long life, but I must move with the times. Clarkson, Hammond and May are too old to be driving across continents, crashing and falling over. They’ve done it all so what’s left to do? It was an anomaly that it happened at all. Back in 2002, TV was about to go bigger than it ever had before right before it retreated into its middle-England period murder mystery stronghold in the face of rising streaming services. Streaming services are at war with each other and becoming ever more cash strapped as the tide of teenage dramas about taking drugs and having sex goes out. Top Gear set a very high bar to begin with and, over the course of 22 years, continually raised that bar little by little. Men and Motors didn’t last, Fifth Gear didn’t last and, ultimately, Top Gear didn’t either. Automotive entertainment has moved online and fractured off into a million rabbit holes. I’ve got obligations, my Dad is coming on retirement and will likely travel and my brother has his obligations, but, every now again, we meet up and talk about cars and have a laugh and that’s all it ever was really.