Then again Top Gear was never really a show about cars. It was about three blokes making a show about cars. It scratched some of the laddish itch, but we weren’t laddy. Women watched us as well as men. We got to a stage where if we forgot our lines or cocked up a stunt, everyone was delighted because that’s exactly what they wanted to see. In a weird way at that point we couldn’t lose. But we always believed in what we were doing. An audience can sniff it out if it’s not authentic. Every discussion between us was driven by passion. It still is. We really did care about the difference between oversteer and understeer, and four-wheel and two-wheel drive and 50-50 weight distribution — all of those things.