Dangerous driving:
In Top Gear’s New Year Special, our intrepid trio tackle incredibly dangerous Himalayan roads in some decidedly dodgy vehicles. James Rampton reports.
Top Gear
takes the road less travelled for its New Year special.
It is usually the preserve of Doctor Who audiences, but I have to confess that during a preview screening of Top Gear’s New Year Special, there were moments where I was watching from behind the sofa. It was that scary.
In this festive special, Paddy McGuinness, Chris Harris and Freddie Flintoff (above) embark on one of the most demanding road trips the programme has ever staged. They take a high-altitude expedition from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, to the Forbidden City of Lo Manthang, a secretive kingdom located high on the Tibetan plateau, on the far side of the Himalayas.
On this five-day journey, the trio drive through the highest mountains, deepest gorges and some of the most hostile terrain on Earth. They struggle through daunting river crossings, enormous mudslides, and vertiginous mountain passes, on a voyage that would be seriously testing even in the most resilient new 4x4s.
However, McGuinness, Flintoff and Harris are not traversing the Himalayas in new 4x4s. They are scaling the world’s highest mountain range in a small, old Peugeot, a small old Renault, and Nepal’s first (and only) home-built car. What could possibly go wrong?
At one point, Flintoff has to tow Harris’ car along an incredibly narrow and crumbly mountain pass, with no barrier and a sheer one-mile drop off the edge. Horrifying doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Harris turns to the camera and
says, “I want this to end now. Oh my Lord, what are we doing this for? I’ve done lots of silly things in my life, but for the first time in my life I want to send my kids a message because I’m quite scared.”
That was the moment where I had to retreat behind the sofa.
When we meet in a central London hotel some months after the filming, I joke that having seen that sequence, I feared that it could have been their last Christmas.
“That’s the last George Michael reference,” Harris quips.
“Once bitten, twice shy,” Flintoff adds, quick as a flash.
Harris can now look back on a petrifying day of filming with a degree of humorous detachment.
“We had just got through that really sketchy section and at the end of the day we were having a cup of tea. At that point, Fred said to me, ‘I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but I’ve never towed anyone before in my life’.”
The 44-year-old Harris, a professional motoring journalist who has been one of the main presenters of Top Gear since 2017, continues that at times during the Himalayan sequence he was genuinely terrified.
“It’s a grown-up show. We don’t want to fall off things and really hurt ourselves. But there were points there where we all went, ‘This is enough, thanks’. It was really silly.
“The drop-offs were massive. A lot of the drone shots do a great job of giving you an idea of the depth of some of the gullies, but they actually looked bigger when you were there. At one point, it was actually a mile straight down. You looked down and there was just this abyss. You’d think, ‘If I fell off here...’ ”
Flintoff, 42, a former star cricketer who played 79 tests for England, chips in that, “I’m pretty blase about most stuff. But there were times during that shoot when I was concentrating probably more than I ever did playing cricket.”
But this sense of jeopardy has always been part of the appeal of Top Gear. That has certainly continued and is one reason why the new trio of McGuinness, Flintoff and Harris, who started presenting together this year, immediately struck a chord with audiences.
McGuinness, 46, a popular host of shows such as Take Me Out, says that, “We are very pleased with the reaction. When you’re filming, you’re having a laugh thinking, ‘This will be all right’, but you never really know. You’re in a bubble and you don’t think about viewing figures.
“Then last night the producers sent me the statistics about the show. This year the audience has gone up 33 per cent in America alone. That’s quite impressive.
“It’s very nice that people have fallen in love with Top Gear again. Even when it wasn’t doing so well, nobody wanted it to fail. It’s a great British institution and I’m delighted to be part of it.”
“At one point, it was actually a mile straight down. You looked down, and there was just this abyss.” – Chris Harris