Former Top Gear host Steve Berry joined Al Arabiya News for an exclusive special interview.
The motoring journalist turned business man told presenter Micheal Prendergast that his old colleague Jeremy Clarkson was a “massive show-offs and egotist” and that’s what made him “unique” and appealing to Top Gear bosses.
Berry also speaks about his new venture, a sports car brand for under $23,000.
On how he got the job at Top Gear from meeting in a news agents, he said, “He said I’m the producer of Top Gear. I said oh, very good.
And just walked out of the news agents. And he followed me out and he said, I think you’d be good on the television. Why don’t come down and have a try out? So I went down there and I got sent at first. To see how it was done. He said, “What you need to do is to go along on a shoot and see how we work.”
When asked the first time he met with Clarkson Berry said, “The first shoot that I went along on was presented by a certain Mr. Jeremy Clarkson. And I’ll never forget this, he turned up two hours late. I turned up half an hour early because I wanted to impress. He turned up to hours late and the crew were fuming. Absolutely fuming, I thought. Right, make a point, don’t do that because you want the crew on your side.”
Berry was asked what is Clarkson like in real life, he said, “So in real life, Jeremy is a less bombastic version of that person that you see on the screen. You couldn’t act that persona for all the years that he has.
“He is kind of like that, and like I said, even though he and I never really got on together, the last time I met him in person, there was a bar, it was at a car show and there was an open bar and he said, Barry, people know we don’t like each other, I’ll buy you a pint and we’ll stand over there pretending we like each.”
He was asked about Top Gear coming to an end and the Grand Tour, “The problem with car shows is, if you looked at Grand Tour or Top Gear, you have to go around the world to impress people. You can’t just go in the car park or in the garden or in a kitchen. You have to like the salt flats in Namibia or the North Pole or somewhere like that. Or else people are like, oh, well, this isn’t as good as the Grand Tour. They set a standard.
“Do you know what? I said, again, I said I don’t like him, but I respect him. I think Clarkson, Hammond and May quit at exactly the right time. It was just on the cusp of them starting to, some of the ideas were coming around for the second or third time. There was still an engaging watch, but I thought, when they quit, I thought oh, that’s good timing.”
On his new sports car business in Manchester for under $23,000 Berry added, “I thought, why have sports cars become so incredibly complex and so insanely powerful? What if we went back to the principles of the Lotus Elite, a car that was super lightweight. And which had skinny tyres and had about 75 brake horsepower.
“We’ve got enough hyper cars. Oh, why do they have to be so expensive? Let’s build something that’s lightweight, simple, and fun, and retails for a fraction of the cost of this other stuff. You don’t need to go crazy fast to have fun. If a car is simple and it’s very direct and you feel connected to the road, 50 miles an hour can feel like 150 miles an hours.”
