Andy Wilman, a former executive producer of Top Gear, has said that senior people at the BBC wanted to get rid of him and presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond and were not prepared to work to keep any of them on the show.
Wilman told the Edinburgh TV Festival that there had been a “perfect storm brewing” before Clarkson hit a producer, which meant some of those on both sides were not prepared to back down.
“We had shit like Argentina go wrong so it was all building. I’m speaking as somebody who loves the BBC ... but some people at the BBC didn’t want us there… It become personal and confrontational. When everything went to shit in March there was no way back, there was going to be a victory [for someone at the BBC].
“Some people didn’t have the will to make it work. I didn’t have the maturity to make it work. Everyone took a position, we were all entrenched. Which is sad because there were people who wanted to make it work.”
Wilman, who relaunched Top Gear with Clarkson in 2002, is producing a new show for Amazon starring Clarkson, May and Hammond called the Grand Tour, which will be released this Autumn.
A montage of scenes from the series shown at the festival featured Clarkson driving through a location from Game of Thrones, May shooting an assault rifle out of the rear window of a car driven by Clarkson and Hammond waking up in a dune buggy being flown beneath a helicopter.
Wilman said 90% of the shoots have been completed but the team was still working on post-production and filming scenes with a studio audience,in a tent put up in a new location for each episode. It has already been taken to South Africa and will make an appearance in the UK.
He joked about the numerous things Amazon lawyers told them they could not do to avoid breaching the BBC’s copyright on Top Gear, including having a regular track race, or writing down lap times on a leader board. “You have these meetings where they say can James May still say cock or will the BBC sue us. And James says ‘Well I’ve always said cock’.”
“They got funnier and funnier. This year we went to Namibia to make a film and the lawyers got out a film we’d done [on Top Gear] in Botswana. And the lawyers go right, there’s a scene in there were you go, this scenery is beautiful, so watch that you don’t do that.
“So we’re in the desert in Namibia, the Skeleton Coast and we’ve got to go ‘For legal reasons, this scenery is shit’.”
Wilman said he had not watched the recent series of Top Gear, which was hosted by Chris Evans, though he quit the show after disappointing ratings. “I didn’t watch it because there was a lot of pain for me. It was everything we did … That doesn’t mean I have any ill feeling to anyone who is making it.
“Chris Evans, everybody went to work to make something. I would not want to wish them one second of ill. I hope they do succeed, because christ you can have two car shows. I hope they crack it.”
