Top Gear: how the BBC behemoth became car crash TV — theguardian.com

You could reasonably argue – and many certainly would – that Top Gear’s big bitey fish never actually went unjumped. Once it had settled on its core presenting tripod of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in 2003, it simply was what it was: three old-enough-to-know-better men wanging on about cars. From the off, Clarkson was a kind of bloviating Typhoid Mary of over-entitled Middle England, 50% highest-grade gammon, 50% the contents of Leo Sayer’s plughole. Hammond played the role of Clarkson’s cooing lackey, sides dutifully bursting asunder at his idol’s every bon mot, like a clammy whelp sucking up to the school bully to recuse himself from being bisected by atomic wedgies every breaktime. And May … well, May always seemed sort of all right, actually. Like a harmless, pottering, grey-muzzled old pooch whose primary contribution to the world is soft, hot farts.

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