The real story of his hiring is pure comic gold. The BBC needed a third presenter after a spat with another host. It was a last-minute panic.
Producers remembered May from that 1999 guest spot. They needed a safe pair of hands. He was a sober, knowledgeable car journalist.
They got that. And they got so much more. They got the man who would famously argue that slower is better. They got the man who would later build a caravan out of a Datsun.
The First Episode Was a Disaster
His first episode in the new format? A total, glorious shambles. The show opened with Clarkson firing a V8 engine into a satellite dish.
May stood there, looking slightly confused. He was the calm guy in a hurricane. The audience had no idea what to make of him.
He wasn’t the loud one. He wasn’t the short one. He was the geek.
And that’s exactly why the show clicked. The three of them became an unbalanced, hilarious machine.
