Call the Midlife (36 page)

Good job too. The team is unsure about the orientation of the main interview area. We decide to flip the whole bar round, far better energy and less restricted views for our audience. People need to be able to see the show to enjoy the show. Amazing how often this isn’t the case in a television studio.

Danny takes everything we pitch him in that 100-mph way
of his, declares he’s across it and disappears off after a couple of hours, deep into the heaving human mass that is Central London at lunchtime. He really is a wonder of nature, like a volcano. Don’t know where he gets his energy from. He never does a tap of exercise and eats almost exclusively white-bread door-stopper sandwiches, red meat and giant wedges of Cheddar cheese. All usually washed down a bottle or two of Chablis.

Return home, well almost. Bump into the fragrant Sharleen Spiteri walking her dog in the local park. We stop to chat and while doing so are bibbed by Loz – Laurence Fox, my ex Billie’s husband. I only catch his gaze for a millisecond but instantly I recognize the look.

‘Fancy a quick pint?’, that’s what it says.

After Shar and I finish up, I text Loz straightaway.

ME: PINT?

LOZ: BE THERE IN 5

Hurrah! Karma decrees I drop Shar a text too in case she fancies a swifty. She does. Ten minutes later the three of us are in the pub.

Bed soon after.

Hit the mattress like a sack of spuds.

Thud.

Out for the count.

Tuesday, 9 June

3 DAYS TO GO

Meet Will after the radio show. Drive to Dunsfold Aerodrome to film
Top Gear
sequence. We take off in a Ferrari 458 Spyder loaned to us from my pals at Maranello in Egham, Surrey, just off the A30. Lovely way to get there, but more importantly an excellent car for surveillance laps so we can save the La Ferrari for the flying, record-breaking-attempt laps.

A full-on multi-camera film crew is there to meet us, all ex
Top Gear
. They have shot countless of these signature flying laps for the
actual show. Jason has been there for half an hour or so, everyone is raring to go.

Several paparazzi have been spotted clicking away in the bushes. I don’t mind, good luck to them, we’ve all got to make a living somehow. We’re only a bunch of blokes playing with super-cars, it’s not as if we are harbouring the second coming. Besides, when you are launching a new show, any publicity helps. Within minutes, photos of what we’re doing begin to appear all over the Internet.

The spotter laps go well, Jason is cool as a cucumber and confident we can post the world’s fastest time around what has become one of the most famous bits of tarmac and concrete in the wuuuuuuurld!

He goes to change into his cover-alls while we set up the cameras in one of four positions we will need to shoot from in order to be able to screen a whole lap on
TFI Friday
in three days’ time. This is properly exciting. I begin to mischievously wonder what it might be like to hang out here once a week for a few weeks a year, ppututting together a new version of whatever the new
Top Gear
might end up becoming.

Little did I know.

And I REALLY DIDN’T know.

Problem, though!

Big, big, big problem. Our beautiful million-pound-plus Fezza has got the hump and decided her computer needs to talk to the mother ship back in Italy before she can bring herself to whizz round the track at anything like the speed we would like her to. Several very clever Ferrari technicians get on the case, but suddenly the day’s mission is cast in doubt. At which point the new me kicks into action.

The me who used to see red and freak out in situations like this has been dispatched, replaced by nice, helpful me, who realizes we’re a long time dead and nothing’s more important than doing what you’re doing with a smile on your face, if you’re doing what you’re doing purely out of choice. Why else would you bother?

That’s not to say a wee bit of squeeky bum doesn’t go amiss, in this instance just enough for me to call my mum who, bizarrely,
only lives two miles away from Dunsfold, and ask her to perhaps save the day.

‘Mum, how do you fancy being perhaps the last person to record a timed lap around the
Top Gear
circuit?’

Despite being just about to leave for an afternoon trip down to Worthing with my sister, she agrees to come to the rescue. What ensues is a full-scale film shoot starring 89-year-old Minnie beginning in her garage as she emerges determined and steely-eyed, back-lit on her ten-year-old mobility scooter, and ending with her kicking Jason and the La Ferrari’s butt. Not exactly we planned, but much funnier and, who knows, may actually end up being better telly on the night.

We run out of track time without the Ferrari turning another wheel. Good decision, well made. Or at least
a
decision, well made. We arrange to try to attempt to break the lap record on Friday morning. It will still be a coup if we can manage to make it happen. For now, though, Minnie is the ‘star, thrashing a million-pound car.’

Head back for Ascot and a late dinner with Tash and the kids. Again a long day but not particularly tired. Feeling blessed with energy all this week.

Once the kids are in bed, Tash and I watch a docu-film on Netflix:
Bobby Fischer Against the World
. All about when chess was bigger than the World Cup back in the Seventies, as the Cold War was in full swing. Russia and the United States considered chess to be the ultimate metaphor for war, the perfect propaganda if your man could beat their’s.

The gripping film chronicles how the uber-eccentric Fischer beats Boris Spassky in what became the most infamous coming together of two Grand Masters a comedy of errors that took place in Iceland of all places. Fischer went on to win after Spassky pulled out, unable to cope with the precocious 29-year-old’s genius and antics. After which Fischer himself, unable to deal with what he had become, gradually grew more and more of reclusive, eventually going insane and denouncing his Jewish upbringing. A brilliant
movie about a brilliant but tragically tortured soul.

Afterwards I sleep the sleep of the dead.

Wednesday, 10 June

2 DAYS TO GO

Bizarrely, nothing scheduled after the radio show today, but I’m working back in big-time telly, that’s just not how it is. Within ten minutes of me arriving home, Will’s on the phone. He wants another run at the script.

Sure, no probs. ‘I’m loving being back in the
TFI
groove, bring it on.’

We begin with the opening titles and pre-titles sketch and plod on from there. Five hours later we are in the pub, Guinness having now replaced the endless bottles of water but Will’s laptop still a-glowing. We have to get to the end of the show. Eventually we do, in a restaurant over steak frites and a half-decent bottle of Bordeaux.

We’re happy with our days work, feeling we’ve captured the essence of old and new with the right balance of each. The guest quota is hotting up. Lewis Hamilton has now confirmed but has requested to remain unannounced until the night – he will be coming straight from that prior Samuel L. Jackson engagement, but doesn’t want anyone to know he’s in town beforehand. Fair enough, as long as he arrives at 9.56 p.m. or earlier, which is when he’s due to be introduced. Please God.

Sir Kenneth Branagh, Ewan McGregor, Noel Fielding, Kirstie Allsopp, U2 and Nick Grimshaw have all now also agreed to appear one way or another. More good news, my favourite booking the wonderful Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has purchased his train ticket. I love the bones of that guy.

I arrive home circa 10 p.m., pour myself a modest brandy and break off a couple more squares of chocolate from the never-ending bar in the fridge. What a taste combo chocolate and brandy is. But two of the worst things you can possibly have the night
before you have to speak on the radio the next day. Chocolate gives you phlegm and brandy dries your throat out. Hey ho, too late now.

I slide in bed, call Tash for our touch-base goodnight chat and by the time my head hits the pillow the script is but a fond and fading memory. No point in even beginning to go over what we’ve written so far. It’s bound to change at least five more times before it settles down and tells us what ‘it’ wants to be.

I fall asleep knowing tomorrow is going to be another big day. They all are at the moment.

But little did I have any idea just how big.

When I closed my eyes I was eighteen hours away from receiving ‘that text’ about ‘that job’.

Thursday, 11 June

1 DAY TO GO

After the radio show I go to the
TFI
studio for a rehearsal of Parts 1 to 3. We call it a block through. It goes well. We’re all surprised just how well, and it gets big laughs from the crew. All-important, those crew laughs – they tell you where the script is flying and where it needs some urgent attention. After Part 3 we realize we are already way over time and need to start cutting immediately. This always feels disappointing at first, but it’s key to making a good, tight show. When entertainment shows start to spread they become leaden very quickly, and once that happens viewers begin to lose interest at an exponential rate.

We drop the opening sketch and any parts of the first half of the show that are just gags, as opposed to items with gags attached. When we’re done with Part 3, that’s it for today, we’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow ahead of the dress rehearsal.

Will and I walk home to my house. I need a quick ten minutes’ power nap before we revise what should be the final draft of the running order and script. Refreshed, I’m back downstairs with Will in my living-room. We take up our usual positions of Will sitting with his laptop perched precariously on his knees – which is always
guaranteed to take several tumbles during a writing session. While he does that I lie on the sofa opposite, spouting out whatever nonsense comes into my mind like a ginger Barbara Cartland minus the make-up and pink chiffon négligée.

I’ve never known what it is that makes Will and I work so well as a ‘two’ but all I know is that I am much better with him than without him. Even when he’s not around but I know he’s back at the office, I still come up with much better ideas than when he’s not involved.

We begin by going through the words, concentrating on the rhythm. It’s good, but everything is playing longer than we first thought. This means even more stuff has to go. We carry on squeezing and cutting until Will declares he needs some food and nips out for twenty minutes to the café around the corner while I check my emails and texts. The last of which is a text from Andy Wilman, the former exec producer of
Top Gear
who, along with his old school pal Clarkson, resurrected the show back in 2002. They tore up the rule-book and transformed it from a safe little parochial half-hour magazine show in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties into the worldwide Car-mageddon television phenomenon it is today.

Andy, along with Jeremy, has often cited
TFI Friday
as part of the inspiration for their reinvention, the industrial warehouse-looking vibe, the general deconstruction of what a television show is usually like. That’s what his very welcome text alluded to:

Love that he opens with ‘Hello mischief maker’. Pot/kettle or what? But lovely of him nonetheless. I see this message as a very good omen, perfectly timed. But just how ironically perfectly timed? I was about to find out.

Will returns from his food run and we resume our cutting-and-pasting collaboration. Half an hour later my text alert goes off again.
This time it’s Mark Linsey, Controller of Entertainment Commissioning for BBC Television. His text reads:

That was it, two sentences, fifteen simple words.

A bomb went off in my head.

Air raid sirens.

A volley of klaxons.

Whaaaaaaat?

Of course I am up for a conversation re:
Top Gear
.

I will always be up for a conversation re:
Top Gear
, even after I’m dead.

Will is busy rearranging, he is the cutting-and-pasting king. I excuse myself. I try to remain calm. I want to scream but I can’t. Besides, I don’t know exactly what ‘Are you still up for a conversation re:
Top Gear
’ means precisely yet. It could mean anything. I go downstairs to the ground floor, out of earshot.

Once on the phone, Mark informs me that the BBC have now ruled out a return to
Top Gear
for James and Richard as well as the already erstwhile Jeremy. He explains that the BBC had left the door open for them to return but that door could not be left ajar indefinitely. Since, as of twenty-four hours ago, they had chosen not to walk through it, it was time for everyone to move on.

I’m blown away. I can’t quite get my head round the fact that James and Richard don’t want to carry on Jeremy-less. The brand is so hot and as long as they both agree to stay, not just one of them, the
TG
global audience really wouldn’t mind. I know I certainly wouldn’t. Regardless of what they might potentially be offered elsewhere as a threesome, I think in their shoes I would have at least given it a go.

But now, that’s suddenly not the point. Mark said: ‘We want to
give the show to you. You can do anything with it you see fit. Complete creative control. You pick the production team, the presentation team, everything. We want you, your vision, your production experience, as well as being the face of the whole shooting match, of course.’

Oh my good God.

You never know what’s around the corner.

I can’t believe I’m now being asked if I would like to take over my favourite television show. I mean, it’s true when all the shit hit the fan back in March I did receive a message asking me to keep an open mind about what might happen with the programme in the future, but I genuinely presumed this was out of courtesy rather than any real intent.