Jeremy Clarkson ‘thought of packing it all in’

JEREMY Clarkson has revealed he thought about doing “nothing at all” after Top Gear, but then Amazon Prime came “riding over the horizon” and a new motoring show began to take shape.

Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson. Picture: PA

But the outspoken presenter said getting to the point of recording the first show “had not been easy”.

Clarkson described the uncertainty in the days after the BBC announced it would not be renewing his contract as a result of a “fracas”.

Speaking about his options, he said: “I didn’t really know what I was going to do. A large part of me considered the appealing option of ‘nothing at all’. A smaller part thought I should change tack and do a programme about farming.”

He added he had no idea what former fellow Top Gear hosts James May and Richard Hammond were going to do, but once they decided to join him, together they set about finding an agent to help embark on a new venture.

Clarkson said that while the world of online programming offered up many opportunities, there were many legal issues to consider.

“And then, riding over the horizon on a white charger, in a brown cardboard envelope, came Amazon. It took us to its London headquarters and showed us the tech it had lined up for the very near future, made us an offer in English - well, it was in American, actually, but that’s close enough - and that was that, we had a new home,” he said.

The 55-year-old told of the birth of the new show in a review of the McLaren P1, one of three cars that will feature in the first episode which will see him go head to head with May and Hammond around a race track.