Top Gear's Captain Slow admits it's a bit of a joke

TOP GEAR is no longer a show about cars and is on the verge of becoming a sitcom, co-presenter James May has admitted.

The 47-year-old confirmed what many viewers have suspected - that he now plays a "character" in the hit BBC2 TV programme.

He said that the aspect of the long-running show which inevitably featured the trio of presenters - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and May - getting in a pickle, did irritate him.

May, nicknamed Captain Slow on the show, admitted: "It's really almost a sitcom now, so we are characters. When I started, Top Gear was a car show about cars, and I was interested in the technology but also the sociology and the artistry of them, the shapes and the colours.

"That was something I've always been into. But it has turned into something else."

As well as Top Gear, he is presenting James May's Man Lab for BBC2, a programme which aims to help men relearn vital skills.

Explaining his new show, he said: "The decline of practical skills, some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying - they can't put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt.

"They believe it's endearing to be useless, whereas I think everyone's getting sick of it."