James May said: 'It’s impossible to know where we will be allowed to go even in a few months, let alone next year, so I think it’s more a case of we know some places we are fairly sure we can’t go very busy countries that are not doing well with COVID. Amazon, Andy Wilman and the presenters are all prepared to do some more filming - all they need is the green light on travel restrictions. It was a good one.”Ĭlarkson joked that it was lucky Hammond escaped serious injury this time because due to Covid rules he wouldn’t be allowed inside “a stranger’s air ambulance”. Which meant all the cameras were rolling when Hammond had his customary accident. He added: “Astonishingly, thanks in part to the rules but mainly to luck, not one of us tested positive on the whole nine-day shoot. “Nicola Sturgeon seems to be driven solely by a deep-seated hatred of the English, so we were expecting her to close the border at any moment.”

And that’s before we get to the problem with Scotland. Writing in his newspaper column about the special, Clarkson said: “I didn’t think there was a hope in hell we’d get started, let alone finished. And to add to all the excitement Richard Hammond has been involved in another car crash - at least some things never change! The presenters were spotted travelling from Edinburgh to the Hebrides in three classic America cars, which were towing caravans. We couldn’t go to the pub, but there was no pub anyway.'

It’s the peripheral stuff that’s a bit tiring. 'We filmed in the normal way we always do. There were complicated systems set up for cleaning everything and it was a bit tiresome going through lots of procedures and being tested every day, but it didn’t get in the way of filming to be honest. We didn’t interact with the locals really. 'We did it in area of Scotland with not many people. And doing it in a bubble, we turned out to be quite good at it. 'I had seen Clarkson and Hammond for some very distant meetings, from the opposite sides of the garden, but I hadn’t seen the crew for a long while. Talking to BT.com about the Scottish jaunt, James May said: 'It was nice to get back to doing what we do. Globetrotting adventures may be off the table for a little while, so the latest episode was filmed across nine days in Scotland. The trio have reunited for another motoring special on Amazon – but this time they’re filming a little closer to home. Not even a global pandemic can keep Clarkson, Hammond and May apart. There are no hotels around and so at the moment there’s no real need for the road to be paved so the fat people from the west can fly over there.'

'We love those experiences where everyone is making do humans are brilliant at adapting to their environments when there’s no money around. 'You had to keep reminding yourself that that’s the main artery of that side of the country, the east. Calling it a road would be like me going down to Saville Row, stitching two bits of cloth together and going, ‘There, that’s a suit because I have done it in Saville Row.’ Talking about the brutal roads of Madagascar that dominate the episodes, Wilman added: 'It’s not even a road. 'It was a combination of a bit of luck, some good research and the knowledge that we wanted a tough car journey. We can start in Réunion, misdirect the boys so they think it’s a holiday and then go, “Oh no, off you go to Madagascar'. 'We knew we wanted a meaty, car-based story and somebody had suggested Madagascar, and coincidentally somebody else had gone 'I found this road on Réunion' and in brainstorming it was like 'Hang on, this is not an either/or, this is brilliant. 'We do our normal process of having a hunt around and thinking about where we haven’t been,' he said. Executive producer Andy Wilman explained how they came up with the idea.

2022.09

The grand tour trailer