I don't watch normal terrestrial television
I watch it on the iPlayer
I don't watch anything on my iPlayer except pornography
You don't watch... iPorn
Ahh we can cut that bit out.
1, 2, 3
Go again
So we've had some pretty demanding and unusual rider requests
on our Men of the Year shoots, but yours is a little more down to earth.
Do you think you could talk us through it?
Have we got one at all?
Our riders?
Sorry, I didn't hear the question
He said, they've has some unusual riders
Riders is like things you want
Demands, demands
What, as in like jockeys?
No, when you demand things
Oh those blue m&m type things?
Yeah
Yeah we do don't do riders
What do you imagine our riders are?
No we don't do riders
We should do really because it would be funny but I can't be bothered
We do eat beef hula hoops and twiglets but we take those with us
But we only eat those because they're there
Can we just do the questions quickly?
Yeah do the questions
Well my rider is that I must wear pants, I do anyway
Um, so what are you guys driving these days?
There it is
Ferrari 458, special needs
No that's broken - I'm driving a BMW i3 this week
BMW i3, Volkswagen golf GTI, 770 cars
Landrover defender, at the moment
How does it feel for you guys to be named a cultural phenomenon?
I don't know
It encompasses my every waking hour, I get up in the morning as that
I don't know about you but I eat my cornflakes in that frame of mind
I still stand, wherever I am when I'm feeling fortunate in the world
going "how on earth did I end up here?"
I think that when I see you standing somewhere...
What standing up?
...thinking how did he end up there?
How did he get up?
Standing
Well, cultural icon - I think the musé d'Orsay is a cultural icon
I wouldn't describe me or indeed him or him as a cultural icon
(Whisper) he can just answer
It's great
Good. So this was a one hundred and sixty million dollar series to produce
No it wasn't
The Daily Mail said it was a one hundred and sixty million
Wikipedia says it because The Daily Mail said it and even Wikipedia now
describes The Daily Mail as "not a reliable news source"
So therefore lets just keep it... nobody knows how much it cost
Some money
It was some...
Yes
Broadly the same as it was before
So do you think that's given you guys the chance to do
some things that you would have wanted to do on top?
Well no because it used to be quite fun annoying people at the BBC
but you can't annoy anyone at Amazon, because they're un-annoyable
Whereas the BBC would get annoyed if your shoes weren't clean
So
In some ways it's slightly surprising, it's like when you leave school
and you find you can smoke in the street
It takes all the fun out of it
It doesn't take the fun out of it, that's the wrong...
You...
No it's fun still
I thought you meant smoking
No smoking's still fun
No the programme's still fun
Doing the programme is still fun
Yeah, no, so it's not like smoking
But you know when you leave school and you can suddenly smoke in the street
and you think "oh"
Yeah, so it's a bit like that
I still smoke obviously
But in answer to your question briefly
No, they don't interfere. They totally leave us to it
What do you feel like Grand Tour influences most? TV or cars?
If it's anything it's TV - it's not cars
I don't think anybody actually takes any notice of what we think about cars
We give some very serious buying advice, regularly
No we don't
No, we never do
No we don't
I genuinely don't think it's a car show
Cars are in it
It's car themed
But it's not anymore than 'Countryfile' is about actual farming
It just isn't, like
"Ooh can I have a go at building that stone wall? Ooh there we are"
"Ooh I'd love to do your job!"
"But I'm going to go back to London to my hotel now"
Um, no, it's not really...
It's an interesting thing moving from mainstream old fashioned television
to what everybody perceives to be the new way of delivering TV shows
and there have been new TV shows that haven't really come from the old world like we did
So it was an interesting leap from one to the other
and actually, I don't think people really care two hoots whether they have to push the 'one'
on their television, or push the Amazon
But more and more broadcasters are now saying channel allegiance doesn't exist
Kids will find what they want to watch
Well my grandfather never let me watch the 'commercial television'
I know I was never allowed to watch ITV, as a kid because it was a bad influence
but that's a long time ago
But people now find what they want to watch and they will find whatever it is
and probably if you ask them afterwards, what did they watch it on? they'd probably have to think
because they're not going to watch whatever is served up to them on a schedule
I mean 'Game of Thrones' - I have no idea what that's on
Yeah but you watch it
I don't know, somebody said is it HBO or Netflix? I know it's not Amazon, so it's one of the others but it's on TV
Well it's true actually, because when we were kids and someone said "what did you watch last night?"
you'd have said, say BBC 2 and now if you asked somebody they's say 'the mobile', which is different
It's the device, not the channel
So would you guys ever go back to a terrestrial station?
Yeah, because nobody would notice
I'm not even certain there'll be terrestrial stations before the time we're allowed to even think about that question
To be honest, there already aren't terrestrial stations, because they're all digital anyway
it's only the scheduling thing that is hung over and most things have 'catch up' and 'watch again' anyway
And the big ones are all doing some resource where you can watch the shows you want to watch
when you want to watch them, which is how a modern audience consumes TV
so the idea of linear, scheduled "you can watch this now and then you can watch this" isn't happening
I mean I like working for Amazon
So if I had a programme idea, I'd go to Amazon
It's rain
Sound recordist is looking
In England, what happens sometimes...
That's not rain
Well it is
No it's not
That's not rain
Just to tell the viewers: if you're watching, that rather odd crackling sound is rain
on the metal roof - nothing we can do about it
No he's wrong it's a massive fire
It's a kettle
It is a kettle
Well it could be a kettle but...
But it's a different thing!
Yeah, but now it's a kettle, somebody has got to come and turn it off and that wastes our time
But now this argument is wasting our time
It's a Friday night, are the pubs open? Just because you live in Wales and you've got thousands of miles to go
Your next question please, sir
How are you better in series one, than in your second season?
Well in series one there were a number of things where you, look back and go "well I wouldn't do that
and I wouldn't do that and I wouldn't do that and I wouldn't do that"
Yeah and we were trying stuff - we had to
There are one or two little things where we think, perhaps we'll have a rethink on in season two
Yeah, Jeremy's absolutely right. We had to try stuff, otherwise it would have been a wasted opportunity
not to try some stuff - some of which we'll carry on and some of which we'll change
Some we might drop. We'll just work it out
It's in the nature of cutting-edge experimental TV and media
Or what we do
So you've been recognised from some pretty far-flung places
What's the most unexpected encounter you've had with a fan?
With?
A fan, or somebody who knew you. Where's been the most unusual place you've been recognised?
I cannot remember the last place I went, where I was not recognised by...
I think Syria. Do you remember in Homs?
Yeah, that's what I was thinking
I mean I look at Homs on the news now and all those places we went through - Palmyra and Aleppo
and you look at them - well you don't look at them on the news, because nobodies really covering them
- but you look at them now and think, when we were there, what not 4 years ago, so not that long ago
people got out "Oh welcome to Syria, Mr Slowly"
Well yeah, do you remember the guy with the roadside hut?
I mean he was just like an equivalent of a burger caravan and it was just millions of miles from anywhere
and he didn't have electricity and he didn't have a telly and he said "welcome to my country Mr Slowly" It was amazing
It doesn't matter where you go, everybody seems to know who we are
so it's odd, but I'm now completely used to it
And without wanting to try and make it sound really cool like "oo we didn't try and go after fame"
but we didn't. All we've ever tried to do is make the best car show we could, and obviously
you can't make a TV show and complain when people watch it and if people watch it they will recognise you
I can
You can ban people
I can moan about everything
But you wouldn't moan about it, but yeah, it isn't something that you pursue for yourself
Why are you watching our show?
Stop it!
Stop watching it!
Yeah, it's a bit embarrassing on trains if everybody's staring at you
I really like it
I love it when people say "I don't want to interrupt your dinner, but would it be alright if me, my brother
and everyone else around my table, come over and regail's me with an unbelievably boring story and then
asks for 53 selfies when they hand each others phones to one another and they all take pictures of each others noses
and go "no I can't work it!" and you just think 'well my dinner's gone cold'
I love that
But you don't complain though - we do it, because you have to
Okay so one last question
He does complain
I do complain - he doesn't he says "thanks for watching"
"Thanks for watching" "Take care" "Thanks for watching"
Don't give it away! Now I have to stop saying it
He always goes "Yeah sure, thanks for watching!" and then he's gone
I just say "Fuck off"
Sometimes he says it too quickly. Sometimes they go "oh I don't want to interrupt"
and Hammond goes "thanks for watching... oh shit"
It's much easier to go "fuck off, fuck off, fuck off and leave me alone"
But we wouldn't do that
the one I've always done is when I've got the children I say "oh no I'm sorry, I'm with the children"
Everyone gets that weirdly
I was at the FA Cup final the other day with Finley, who's my height and 22 and built like a brick shit arse
"I'm looking after the children" and you can see people go "well hardly"
What, behind that enormous man?
Brilliant. Okay, so this is my last question
Hooray - oh sorry
So do you look back at everything that happened in 2015 and think
actually it was kind of a fortuitous series of events?
I was drunk the whole year, I can't remember it
I wouldn't call it fortuitous - I would call it a dog leg in that it was just we were going along that way
and now we're going along that way and you would have been going...
Actually, I don't think it would be
I don't think it would be. I think one of the engines would probably have been unfollowed if we hadn't have changed it
Possibly. It forced change, but the point is...
Do you know what I mean? One of the engines would have gone out
and it just would have been going:
Try spelling that
We haven't come out of it badly. We've refreshed and the others have rethought it
And viewers get a new show
And I watch them and they watch us. It's great, what's not to like?
(Whispering) I don't watch them
I do
I don't watch them
I don't watch normal terrestrial television
I watch them on the iPlayer
I watch everything on my iPlayer apart from Pornography
Do you not watch iPorn?
Ahh we can cut that bit out
I think they'll probably leave that bit in, bet you any money they'll leave that bit in
Yep
I gave you a couple of silly answers