They became household names with Top Gear, they’ve travelled to the furthest corners of the world with The Grand Tour… but now Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are finally calling time on their 21-year working relationship.
The trio are currently promoting the most recent special episode of Prime Video show The Grand Tour, which will see them head to Zimbabwe in pursuit of motoring excellence.
Earlier this year, Hammond hinted that the end might have come for the trio, but that it would be “at a place, in a manner and at a time of our choosing.”
“We decided a long time ago. The one thing we wanted to be in control of is deciding when and where and how we landed,” he said.
Now, their joint company, W. Chump and Sons (which made The Grand Tour) is being dissolved – as of July 11 – despite making an annual turnover of £6m, according to Mail Online. And now it seems as though the upcoming special may well be their last.
In its heyday, Top Gear was the biggest show on the BBC, drawing in millions of viewers and millions of pounds. Created by Clarkson (who bought the show’s blueprints from the BBC and sold it back to them), the show became a megahit that drew huge live audiences and spawned countless specials that saw Clarkson, Hammond and May race cars against speedboats, head to South America and poke fun at racing driver The Stig.
The Grand Tour, which followed in 2016, showed the pair attempt to replicate that success with a similar format. Now, however, Clarkson is enjoying newfound success with show Clarkson’s Farm, which follows his adventures in farming at the Oxfordshire farm he owns, named Diddly Squat.
Clarkson’s Farm has become a megahit for Prime, and season three, which came out earlier this year, saw Clarkson expand on that success by moving into farming pigs and growing mushrooms.
“It’s genuine reality television,” he told the Standard at a Q&A on the farm about the show’s sucess. “What you see actually happens, and none of it’s planned. I mean, the Grand Tour, everything was planned, literally everything… Nothing is planned on this. Nothing. I have no script.”
