James May has opened up about rumours that himself, Jeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond are set for a reunion.
The trio announced last year that they would be ceasing to film TV shows as a group 22 years into working together.
First appearing on Top Gear together before starting The Grand Tour on Prime Video, Clarkson, Hammond, and May were the faces of both British TV motoring for over two decades.
May spoke out recently though, rejecting the idea that they will continuously announce comebacks, revealing that they really are done, except for a set of upcoming The Grand Tour specials.
Advert
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, May said that he wasn’t annoyed when he was asked about Top Gear because he spent ‘over a third of [his] life working with those two idiots’.
He went on to add, when asked about the much-talked about the fact that the trio’s production company had been dissolved: “Yes we have disbanded. There isn’t going to be a reunion. We’re not like Led Zeppelin or anything like that. In many ways, we’re not like Led Zeppelin.”
Led Zeppelin have reunited on several occasions after disbanding in 1980, doing a concert together as recently as 2007, 27 years after the band ‘ended’ following John Bonham’s death.
Speaking about the end of their working relationship, May said: “Well it was emotional I supposed, I’ve been in that job longer than I’ve been in any other job by a long, long way.”
He pointed to how Hammond and Clarkson were a ‘significant part of’ his life.
He finally added: “I also think that it was time to stop because we always said we would land it with dignity not fly it into the cliffs.
“It was probably the right time to stop. We are getting on a bit, our view of the subject is probably becoming a bit dated.
"It’s time for a younger generation to re-evaluate it and think of a new way of talking about things like cars.”
The denouncement of the possibility of a reunion comes after the news that the trio would be coming back together one last time on TV for The Not Very Grand Tour.
While this sparked rumours of the trio reuniting for good, these were clearly overly hopeful.
The four-episode special will involve the trio looking back on their time together on the Prime Video show.
One special, focused on the combustion engine, will be called The Not Very Grand Tour: The Power And The Glory, with other instalments in the mini-series called The Grand-ish Tour: A Trip Down Memory Lane, The Grand-ish Tour: A Bit Further Down Memory Lane, and The Grand-ish Tour: Completely Lost Down Memory Lane.
The trio will react to archival footage of their own shoes and motoring history.
Topics: James May, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, TV, TV and Film, The Grand Tour, Top Gear
Michael Slavin