The Top Gear Story - The 100% Unofficial Story of the Most Famous Car Show... In The World. Martin Roach
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‘From the start I tried to improve the show’s journalism,’ explains Jon Bentley. ‘My aim in the 1980s was to try and make it more like Car magazine; that was a magazine I used to wait for eagerly and devour avidly every month. That publication was quite critical and controversial in its opinions on cars. Back then I think cars featured more in general conversation: people in pubs used to talk about whether the Sierra was better than the Cavalier – it was the most sophisticated product people used at the time. In some ways, technology has now taken the role that cars used to have. People now might have a heated debate about whether PCs are better than Macs, or whether Android’s better than the iPhone. Back then it was about cars: a new Golf was an event.’
Bentley’s rapid rise up the Top Gear career ladder continued and in 1987 (after a brief period working on attachment to the BBC’s Timewatch), he became the motoring show’s producer: ‘I was joined by Ken Pollock, who was very keen on motorsport. Being producer didn’t mean you stopped directing individual items but it did mean you were responsible for delivering the whole programme – still 30 minutes at that stage – and helping to manage any directors or other people who might be working on it.’
However, for the purposes of this book, Bentley’s role as producer also came with one crucial new responsibility: he was able to introduce new presenters. Enter one Jeremy Clarkson …
‘I used to go on car launches occasionally,’ recalls Bentley, ‘either to shoot an item or, when the series was less active, to drive the new car and meet different people. On the Citroen AX launch (which I always remember as being in the New Forest, but may actually have been in Berkshire – well, it was in a forest, anyway!), I sat down at dinner and next to me was Jeremy Clarkson. He was a writer on Performance Car at the time, but I think he was on the launch because he used to syndicate local newspaper motoring columns and was writing a test of the new Citroën. We had a long conversation and he seemed exactly the sort of person I wanted as a presenter on Top Gear – funny, opinionated, passionate about cars but not in the least bit serious or po-faced. Perfect. I don’t think I considered for a moment whether he [looked the part] or not.
‘I’d become established as a producer [by then so] I felt in a strong position to back my hunch, arrange a screen test and convince my boss we should hire him. Of course these days if you feel like screen testing someone, you can just point your phone at them and record a video. Back then, in 1988, it was almost before the days of even VHS camcorders and you’d need a bit of investment in a crew with a sound recordist to go out and shoot a screen test, so I had to convince the powers-that-be to invest in a screen test day.’
A full day of screen testing was arranged at Shugborough in Staffordshire and Clarkson, along with an array of other potential presenters including several high-profile car magazine editors and writers, was invited along. ‘I tested Jeremy [on that day] along with a few other people I thought might have potential. I asked people to bring along a car of their choice and talk about it for two minutes then I would supply a surprise car for them to talk about unprepared. I chose the 2CV because I thought it was universally known and the sort of car everyone would have an opinion on.
‘Jeremy brought along a Range Rover and was very funny, streets ahead of the others. I hadn’t read much of [his writing] but he just came over very well as a strong, lively personality. I kept that screen test tape for ages but one day when I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it. A pity! I wish I still had it.’
Clarkson was one of the first new faces Bentley put forward and he was delighted when Jeremy was offered a job. The producer’s gut instinct was quickly validated: ‘We had a few meetings and I explained that the best way to write a TV script was to put the pictures on the left-hand side and the words on the right-hand side, make breaks for music or action, and think about how long each sequence should be. Jeremy just took to it immediately. I went out with him for the first couple of items but thereafter he became the sort of presenter who could almost be his own producer. You could put him with a director who was brilliant visually and very good at pace and music, and you knew you’d end up with six or seven minutes of great, memorable stuff. Always excellent!’
One of Clarkson’s very first features was a test of a new Mercedes S-Class in the south of France, around 1991. ‘I think the Merc S-Class was the first car test we did that had a bit of extra dramatic polish to it,’ recalls Bentley. ‘The director, Dennis Jarvis, cut a sequence of it driving round to Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”.’
And it wasn’t just Clarkson who Bentley introduced to the show. Quentin Willson was a brilliant addition in 1991, a former used car salesman with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the motor trade. Willson actually founded a car dealership selling prestige and supercars such as Ferraris and Maseratis. His journalistic background boasted a deputy editorship of the second-hand car magazine, Buying Cars. Again, Bentley was a big fan: ‘He was a car trader but also had an English degree, which may help explain his excellent way with words. I think he started running nightclubs in Leicester after university, and trading and writing about cars in his spare time. We needed a second-hand cars expert: I thought Quentin’s writing was very good and as a car dealer, he fitted into the “poacher-turned-gamekeeper” role very well. I talked about him with Jeremy, who had met him and thought he had potential, too. So I arranged to meet Quentin in a pub in Ombersley and he seemed great for the job. His early items went down well – one on buying a second-hand XR3 and another on why you shouldn’t buy a used Metro – slightly controversially in the case of the Metro, because of a perceived anti-Rover bias.’
Willson would appear on every Top Gear episode for a decade and was rightly seen as a stalwart of the show.
Contrary to widespread sources, Bentley confirms he did not introduce Tiff Needell to Top Gear: ‘My colleague Ken Pollock introduced him. He saw an excellent driver, who could actually talk about his experiences at the wheel while driving. He was the first professional driver the show had, I think.’
He continues: ‘However, I was very pleased to introduce Vicki Butler-Henderson. We needed to find another woman presenter and here was one who could drive on the racetrack. I saw her picture in Max Power magazine – I thought she’d be the younger male viewer’s ideal fantasy girlfriend.’ Butler-Henderson was a racing driver who brought a touch of class and a certain sex appeal to the show; she was from a racing family, with her grandfather, father and brother all involved in motorsport. She began racing karts when she was only twelve years old. In her twenties, she started writing about cars as well as still racing them to a very high level. After working at Auto Express, What Car? and Performance Car, she became launch editor at the new publication, Max Power, which is where Jon Bentley spotted her. His Top Gear colleague Jeremy Clarkson would later call VBH ‘the personification of the Porsche 911 C4S’!
Bentley failed, however, to persuade the powers-that-be to recruit a certain James May, at the time a relatively unknown motoring writer who nonetheless already had many fans among the car magazine-reading public: ‘I did a screen test with James on my drive with a Caterham in the early 1990s. He’d always been keen to work on the show. I thought he was great – funny and confident – but my bosses thought at the time that he was too similar to Jeremy, two relatively posh-sounding young blokes which is strange because when you put them together now, you see how different they are. He went on to join Driven [Channel 4’s rival motoring show, launched in 1988], which started his presenting career.’
Notably, Driven had elements that differed to the old version of Top Gear but would prove very popular in later motoring shows: the presenters – initially Mike Brewer, James May and Jason Barlow – interacted with each other on items, rather than alone and there was also a central location, in this case a truck on a race track, from where certain features were based. At the time of its launch, Driven quickly attracted a healthy ratings fan-base, perhaps the first sign that Top Gear would not have it all its own way.
Meanwhile, old Top Gear itself changed format in 1991. Instead of using the central location for key presenters to talk about upcoming features, it became a magazine-style programme (without a central