Being introduced to Top Gear viewers by motormouth Jeremy Clarkson as a “blithering idiot” was the shape of things to come for long-suffering James May.
The floppy-haired presenter would accept with a world-weary grace becoming the amiable butt of Clarkson’s schoolboy pranks and banter.
Richard Hammond completed the trio of petrol heads whose infectious on-screen chemistry has powered BBC ’s Top Gear and then Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour to global success for 20 years.
James, 59, comes across as the straight man in the team, sensible Mr Nice Guy.
But this is not how he sees himself.
He told the Sunday People : “I am a total s**t underneath but I try to be nice.”
The ex-choirboy said: “I should have been a vicar. It’s one of those nice fantasies but it is too late to retrain as anything.”
He also accepted there would be downsides to taking the cloth. “You have to deal with a lot of difficult people as a vicar and I don’t think I would be up for that.
“Some old people think I’m reasonably dependable because I’m not a complete yobbo, and I think some young people find me quite amusing or quaint.
"I don’t think it goes further than that. I am not Stephen Fry or Michael Palin, they are national treasures.”
Bristol-born James, the son of an aluminium factory manager, lives in London with his partner of 22 years, art critic Sarah Frater.
They don’t have children but James has no regrets about not being a dad.
He said: “I might have been an absolutely rubbish one and my kids would have all grown up as glue-sniffing hippies, I don’t know.”
He argued that by not having kids his carbon footprint would be far smaller, despite driving super cars and flying all over the world, as he has not sired any future polluters.
“It is convenient isn’t it? I’ll reassure myself of that and then go for a ride on my boat,” he adds with a wry smile.
Just because he does not have children, James still recognises the need for older people to help them, even if they see them as a threat.
He said: “They are going to change the way the world is.
"They are going to change the patterns of popular received wisdom, they ultimately are going to make you redundant from your job and the world. But that’s the way it should be.
“Young people should be annoying us and winding us up and challenging everything we think, and if they are not doing that they are not fulfilling the role of being young people.
"We mustn’t try to turn them into hollow shells of us or as a means of redressing the things we’re disappointed about in our lives.
“They are the young and the world and everything in it is theirs and it should be.”
He believes the world has become generally more spiritual in the past 10 years, as he once predicted.
“Things like the green movement, the woke movement, the attitude of young people which I find absolutely fascinating. They are broader and more free thinking than we ever were.
“They are making the world a very exciting and challenging place to live in. This is a sort of faith movement in itself as it’s about inclusivity and kindness, awareness and wellbeing, and mindfulness which are sort of the things religions are supposedly about.
“Everything is being questioned at the moment in a way that it hasn’t been before in my life and I think that is no bad thing.”
James said he finds cancel culture “a bit” confusing, does not believe in censorship and also dislikes the label “snowflake”.
“The cancellers think they have it within their gift to decide who is OK and who should be cancelled.
"But of course they don’t have authority. I get very confused by the anti-cancel culture so these are the people who say we have the right to offend everybody and you shouldn’t be offended.
“I don’t think anybody has the power to cancel anybody else because as Cromwell said, ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken’.
“At the same time I don’t like people who overreact saying, ‘Oh everybody is being a snowflake, everybody is being offended’ because, in my experience with people like that, they are the easiest to offend, if you pick on the things that happen to be dearest to them.
"I don’t believe in censorship or that social media providers should police what is on social media.”
On to lighter matters. James pours a large glass of his favourite Italian wine, which he bought on a recent trip for his new solo TV travel programme, James May: Our Man in Italy.
In the series, which takes him the length and breadth of the country, he tries his chances against the Juventus goalkeeping coach, explores a mountain lab researching dark matter, visits a cheese factory, and poses on stage as a knight.
Italy is becoming a popular go-to destination for TV shows for the likes of Gino D’Acampo, Bruno Tonioli, Craig Revel Horwood, and father and son duo Bradley and Barney Walsh.
James confesses he has never watched any of them because he has imposter syndrome. He said: “Every time I make something for TV or write something for a newspaper I think this is when I am going to be found out. In the past I watched travel shows but recently I haven’t. Not because I don’t like them or I don’t like those presenters. I think they are great.
“I don’t want to watch them and think, ‘Oh bloody hell this is good’ because they would
upset me.”
But surely all the miles on the clock for Top Gear and The Grand Tour have cured him of insecurity? He has also done a cookery show, James May: Oh Cook!, and James May: Our Man in Japan.
He admits he never thought he’d last more than two years on Top Gear.
“I don’t think any of us ever imagined,” said James. “I thought this is a good gig and a bit of a laugh and thought we might do it for a few years and we’re still getting away with it.
“They didn’t want me at first. The BBC thought I was wrong but they couldn’t find anybody else. I think we are stuck in it now.”
- James May: Our Man in Italy, Prime Video, from July 15
