Will Top Gear keep May and Hammond for £1m each?
JAMES May and Richard Hammond may return to Top Gear – after the BBC opened its chequebook and offered them £1million each to stay.
It is part of a desperate bid by corporation bosses to persuade the pair to continue hosting the show and rescue it from potential disaster following Jeremy Clarkson’s sacking from the programme.
The motoring show would return in the same sort of format as Have I Got News For You, with a different host joining May and Hammond each week.
A BBC source told one newspaper: ‘Despite their pronouncements of loyalty to Clarkson, Hammond and May have taken the trouble not to resign in protest at his sacking ... [and] have each been offered £1million a year to keep the Top Gear flame of inspired puerility alive.’
Hammond and May have previously i ndicated that they would not front the show without Clarkson.
May said in April that it would be ‘lame’ to do the show with a ‘surrogate Jeremy’ and that the three men came ‘as a package’. Hammond later said he was ‘not about to quit [his] mates’. How- ever, a well-placed source said the BBC was doing everything in its power to persuade them to stay, amid fears that the collapse of Top Gear could leave a major hole in its budget.
The show aired in more than 200 countries, helping to bring in about £50million a year to the broadcaster.
It is not clear if Hammond and May’s potential £1million deals would include their fees for maki ng other BBC shows. May presents James May’s Man Lab and James May’s Toy Stories on BBC2, and has hosted a number of BBC series with wine critic Oz Clarke.
Hammond has hosted BBC1’s game show Total Wipeout and the CBBC series Blast Lab, which have both been axed, and also appears in programmes for other broadcasters such as Science Of Stupid on the National Geographic channel.
The BBC could also be paving the way for the eventual return of Clarkson, who was dropped from the show in March for punching his producer, Oisin Tymon, in a row over a steak.
BBC2 boss Kim Shillinglaw has made it clear that Mr Clarkson is not barred from working for the corporation for ever.
And Clarkson told Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show last month: ‘James and Richard can go back to the BBC, that door is still open for them... Well so can I, you know, I’m not sacked remember.’
The changing line-up of presenters for Have I Got News For You has helped to keep the show feeling fresh, and was brought in after Angus Deayton was axed in 2002 following scandals involving his private life.
The BBC will be hoping that its plans for Top Gear will have the same effect and help to stave off a revolt by viewers loyal to Clarkson, Hammond and May.
‘Inspired puerility’