Top Gear

Top Gear has been a BBC motoring magazine show since 1977. The earlier shows were hosted by Angela Rippon, Tiff Needel, Noel Edmonds, Quentin Wilson et al. This iteration was cancelled by the BBC in 2001 when ratings fell off a cliff. At the time there was a motorbike reviewer on the show called Steve Berry, who turned up recently on Wheeler Dealers, his wife worked in one of the fashion shops I was at the time Area Manager for - stick with it - she used to come to work in the cars he had been given to test and once she let me have a go in one, a Jeep Wrangler which was nothing like my company Vauxhall Cavalier and a whole lot more fun.

In 2002 it was revived by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman and stopped being a string-backed driving gloves type motoring show and became edgy, fun and anarchic, and not always mostly about cars. Clarkson was supported by James May and Richard Hammond, with an anonymous test driver called 'The Stig'. The show was carefully made and cleverly scripted and became must-watch TV. By 2015 it was running out of steam and new ideas and after Clarkson reportedly punched a production assistant he was removed from the programme, May and Hammond resigned.

Since then the presenters have been shuffled a couple of times and at the time of writing it still limps along, but the post Clarkson drivers of the show failed to get what it was that he did that made it so good. It looked off the cuff and improvised, but it was actually well plotted and scripted to look like three blokes acting the fool. Three blokes just acting the fool does not work so well - or at all. Mostly though, by the time the Clarkson team left the story had been told and the show had simply had its day. It was great while it lasted though.

Three notable features are shown below, The Stig's Power Laps, where he tested just how fast a performance car would go around the track, the unbreakable Toyota Hi-Lux pickup and the time they tried to make floating cars that would cross the English Channel.