Top Gear’s trio talk mid-life crisis, cars and their favourite Bond
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness are back for their fourth series of the popular motoring show – and once again they’re staying close to home
There’s a moment in the new Top Gear series that sees former cricket star-turned-TV presenter Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff having to stop and ask for directions. As with many of the high-octane segments on the BBC One motoring series, it’s mid-challenge and the presenting trio – Flintoff, Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness – are racing to see who reaches a set destination first.
Cricketing star Flintoff, 43, has just one small issue though – remembering the directions given to him.
He explains: “The problem is, though, every time I ask for directions, I’ll do the window, I say ‘oh, do you know where this is?’ and for some reason I never listen to them.
“And I’m being polite and said ‘thank you’, and what did she say? I have no idea. But I’m not one of them who is worried about asking – I’ll ask for help if I need it.”
Flintoff is joined by motoring expert Harris, 46, and McGuinness, 47, to talk about the returning Top Gear series, and the friendly jibes you see on screen are ever-present.
A grinning Harris chips in to Flintoff’s explanation: “Poor old passers-by are thinking, ‘that Ben Stokes has let himself go’.”
The chemistry between the three translates onto the screen excellently, and the upcoming series – the fourth with them steering the Top Gear machine – is filled with many such moments.
For the second time, the series has been UK-bound due to travel restrictions as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. But McGuinness says: “These films in the UK are really good and I don’t think the viewers will miss the big road trips this time.”
All in the same Covid bubble in order for them to film, it was a welcome relief for them to be working.
McGuinness, also an on-screen favourite presenting ITV dating series Take Me Out, adds: “A lot of the stuff we were filming, we were a little bit out in the sticks, so you weren’t really aware of shops being closed and stuff like that.
“We were filming, we were always busy and it’s long days. But it was nice to get out and see the lads and have a bit of fun and kind of switch off from the news for a little bit, you know? And all the sort of ... We’re all stuck in this terrible situation, and so it was nice to just take your mind off it for a few days.”
Former England cricketer and Ashes winner Flintoff concurs.
“I feel fortunate as well just to get out. You go out and you drive cars and you’re filming and you’re working, you’re a bit more appreciative of what you’re doing,” he says. “I’m not saying you take it for granted but, you know, work comes in all the time and then you stop, and then you have the chance to do it again.
“I think everyone was really looking forward to it, weren’t they?”
Some of the challenges they’ll face include tackling the issue of “mid-life crisis” cars, a Scottish Highlands off-road adventure, driving some of the most-loved cars from the James Bond films and a trip down memory lane as they take older vehicles once driven by their dads for a spin.
A question about the mid-life crisis episode provides the perfect opportunity for Harris and McGuinness to poke some fun at the glasses Flintoff is wearing.
When McGuinness dubs them sunglasses, Flintoff replies hastily: “They’re not sunglasses, they’re prescription lenses with a blue tint.”
Returning to talk of the episode, he says: “With the mid-life crisis, we turned it on its head a little bit. It’s more of an opportunity to get the things you’ve always wanted.
“So, I had a TVR convertible, so I wanted that car when I was 20. I got to drive it, so, yeah. A lot of these things you get and you wanted them when you were younger but you can have them now, but they probably don’t look quite as good as you think they do.”
The discussion moves on to the Bond episode, with 007 stars Roger Moore and Daniel Craig named as their top picks.
McGuinness explains: “I think your favourite Bond is related to the era you got into Bond – and mine was Roger Moore. And I love, he sort of did a bit more of the comedy stuff, Roger Moore. It’s a bit more tongue-in-cheek and I really like that.”
Craig gets Harris’s vote, who says: “I think Daniel Craig is a fantastic Bond because I just quite like the moody, dark thing. You know, for me, Bond is a pretty confused character and I think he’s done a pretty good job of that.”
The episode which sees them all take the wheel of the same models once driven by their fathers – including a BMW, Ford Fiesta and a Cortina – is an impactful one.
The show’s co-executive producer, Clare Pizey, says: “It offers something very different for Top Gear. It starts with the cars, and there’s the usual madcap challenges, but it gave us the opportunity to make a more emotional film than we would usually do on Top Gear and I hope it really resonates with the audience.”
For Harris, it was an intensely personal episode.
He says: “It was problematic for me – it’s a heartfelt film, and it was probably further than I ever wanted to go sharing my personal life on TV. My father died a long time ago and even though you move on with your life I still find it quite difficult to talk about him.
“I’ve got lots of cars and I’m very lucky that I can get hold of most cars I want, but out of respect for my father I’d never sat in the driving seat of that BMW model before and it took some persuading to get me to do the film.
“But I loved driving the car. I loved watching Paddy and Fred go through the same emotional journey as me and talking about how integral the motor vehicle was to your relationship with your parents.”
Is their love of cars a legacy they’d like to pass on to their children?
“I don’t know,” reflects McGuinness, adding: “As a parent, as long as your kids are happy and comfortable in doing what they’re doing, I’m not really fussed about that to be honest.
“They’ve just got to be happy in my eyes – whether they’re into cars, bikes, running, walking – as long as they’re happy, that’s the main thing.”
Flintoff adds: “I think for me, if I can be as good a dad as my dad is, that would be my greatest achievement.”
Harris says he tries to make car journeys with his children fun, including letting them having control of the airwaves.
Prompted by Flintoff as to what they listen to on the radio, the revelation that they listen to BBC Radio 4’s sitcom Cabin Pressure, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is followed up by a string of jests from Harris’s co-presenters.
The trio are all laughing as jokes fly thick and fast between them, including a goodnatured jibe of “Get Clive Anderson’s Loose Ends on, dad!”
A smiling Harris says: “I just can’t win, can I? I just can’t win.”
Top Gear returns to BBC One, tonight at 8pm.
SOME things are just not meant to be. Take smell-o-vision. A duff idea in cinemas, it didn’t work on TV either. You will never be more glad of that failure than when watching
The Secret Science of Sewage (BBC2, Thursday, 9pm).
Presented by Dr George McGavin, Glasgow-born, Edinburgh-educated entomologist and author, and Dr Zoe Laughlin, there is no hiding what the subject is, much as we would want to. As McGavin says, sewage is something humans are hard-wired to avoid. Little wonder when you consider some of the nasty stuff lurking within, and that is before we get to the dreaded wet wipes (responsible for 75% of all blockages, since you ask.)
The good doctors have been given “exclusive access” to Minworth Sewage Treatment Works in Sutton Coldfield, though I cannot imagine there was a lot of competition. Their task: to discover whether there is more to the brown stuff than we might think. Could one person’s sewage eventually be another’s energy source? Might sewage hold the key to tackling the next superbug? Could it even save the planet’s food supply?
Obviously there are answers to be had here, otherwise our intrepid two have had a wasted trip.
The sewage is followed from its arrival, through the filtration and cleansing process, and out the other side. Human waste amounts to less than 2% of raw sewage so there is not a lot disgusting to see, but there is enough to avoid having your tea while watching.
This is particularly the case when the inspection hatch at the filtration stage is opened to reveal some of the stuff that is screened out early on.
Dr Laughlin’s guide at this point is Andy the technician. Laughlin expects he must be used to it by now. Not quite. “When you open it up and see a dead rat hanging by the tail it’s still a bit of a shocker,” says Andy.
With the aid of animated guides and interviews with scientists in the field, the doctors discover all the wonders to potentially be had. They make a watchable presenting duo, each as enthusiastic for discovery as the other.
Oddly, it is some way into the programme before anyone mentions the smell, which is at its most pungent during the settlement process, as Dr McGavin discovers when handed a container full of sewage. You
really don’t need smell-o-vision to do the scene justice. The look on his face is proof enough.
It takes a while to tune in to The Flight Attendant (Sky1, Friday, 9pm, full series on Now TV). Not because this thriller with comic undertones is hard to follow. Far from it. But it is set in this weird world where people get on and off planes as if they were buses, go to clubs, restaurants, meet others, have fun, nobody wears a mask. Vaguely rings a bell, doesn’t it?
Cassie (Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory) is the eponymous high flyer with a tendency to get so drunk it is not uncommon for her to wake up with a stranger. On a flight from New York to Bangkok, she and a first class passenger click over a love of Russian literature, and a few other things besides.
Later, there’s a date, dinner, bed, and she wakes the next day into a nightmare. There’s a guy in her sheets again, but this one won’t be explained away easily.
An actor since childhood, Cuoco is successfully channeling her experience into programme making. She was executive producer on the TV series Harley Quinn, and takes the same role here. Joining her in the predominantly female cast is Rosie Perez, playing Cassie’s best friend and fellow flight attendant.
There’s a touch of Hitchcock about The Flight Attendant, from the graphics in its opening titles to the “anything can happen” air. But the fast paced editing, the frequent breaking of the fourth wall, and the poptastic soundtrack, place the show firmly in the feminist 2020s.
Cuoco is terrific in the lead as the woman who, when not drinking herself into oblivion, insists she is living a “super fun life”. Flashbacks to the past suggest the reality is far more complicated than she can handle. Who is she really and what did happen that night in Bangkok? You’ll be intrigued enough to make this your new must-see.
A little bit of Hollywood by way of Scotland arrives on The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer (Channel 4, Tuesday, 8pm), and we don’t mean Paul Hollywood, the judge. James McAvoy (X-Men, Atonement, Split) is the name and donning a pinny to raise money for charity is his game.
In this, week two, he is joined in the tent by comedian David Baddiel, the singer Anne-Marie, and Olympic gold-medalist Dame Kelly Holmes. Hitherto not known for his baking skills, McAvoy could be a revelation, or a collapsed sponge with a soggy bottom. On Bake Off it can go either way.