Jeremy Clarkson has shut down any hopes of a Top Gear return, accepting that the show “is needed” more than ever after Freddie Flintoff's accident.
While conversing with The Times of London, the 65-year-old television presenter said, “There’s room for a car programme at the moment because cars are changing so fast and electrical cars are coming along and nobody really understands what’s a good one and what isn’t.”
Clarkson further added, “Back in the 1950s motoring journalism was important because all the car companies were trying new things — different types of engines and different types of gearboxes — and you needed people to steer you through the complexity.”
He quipped, “Then by and large it was unnecessary for the last 40 years and now it’s necessary again because [when] I look at a kilowatt per hour car, I have no idea what that means.”
Notably, Clarkson spoke about the show’s return the same week as the release of Flintoff’s self-titled documentary on Disney+.
In the documentary, the former English cricketer remarked that the makers of Top Gear treated him as a “piece of meat.”
He said, “That’s the danger that television falls into — and I found it out the hard way eventually. Everyone always wants more. Everyone wants that thing that no one has seen before — that bigger stunt, or to dig that little deeper.”
“In some ways they think: ‘Let’s have that near miss because that will get viewers.’ I should have been cleverer because I had already learnt it in sport after all the injuries and injections and times I got sent out on a cricket field like a piece of meat. That’s where TV and sport are quite similar. You’re just a commodity,” Flintoff stated.