Top Gear Tension? Former Presenter Drops Unexpected Comment About Clarkson!
A former Top Gear presenter has sensationally hit out at former colleague and co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
Steve Berry, who presented the original format of Top Gear from 1993 to 1999, has now come out and slammed the Clarkson’s Farm star.
Amongst many other things, Berry said Clarkson is ‘a less bombastic version of that person that you see on the screen’.
Speaking to Al Arabiya News, Berry, a motoring journalist turned businessman, told presenter Michael Prendergast that his old colleague Jeremy Clarkson was a “massive show-off and egotist” and that’s what made him “unique” and appealing to Top Gear bosses.
“He (Clarkson) 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.
“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.
“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.”
Berry also touched on the end of the Grand Tour, which starred Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, the most well known presenters of Top Gear.
He said: “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.”
