Entertainment

Jeremy Clarkson: All you get now on Twitter is Gary Lineker

The car enthusiast said he will not watch the new Top Gear and compared it to having a “baby adopted” by somebody else.
The car enthusiast said he will not watch the new Top Gear and compared it to having a “baby adopted” by somebody else. The car enthusiast said he will not watch the new Top Gear and compared it to having a “baby adopted” by somebody else.

Jeremy Clarkson has said he does not look at fan reaction to his TV show on Twitter because the social media site is “purely a medium for Gary Lineker”.

The presenter of The Grand Tour has also said it would be “difficult” to watch the rebooted version of his former show Top Gear because it was a part of his life for so long.

Clarkson’s run fronting the BBC motoring show came to an end in 2015 when he left the broadcaster over a fracas with a producer, and his co-stars Richard Hammond and James May went with him to create their alternative car show on Amazon Prime.

The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour (Amazon Prime Video)

The first series aired at the end of last year, and, while Clarkson said the response from Amazon bosses has been positive, he appeared to hint he avoids looking at Twitter to see what fans are saying.

Clarkson, 57, said: “All you get on Twitter now is Gary Lineker, it’s purely a medium for Gary Lineker.”

Remarking on the football pundit, who has 6.77 million followers, he added: “He’s a busy man, he’s got a lot of tweeting to do.”

Clarkson said he was a “huge relief” the first season of The Grand Tour was largely well-received, but that the secrecy around the viewing figures on the streaming service has kept them in the dark about its popularity.

He said that “for all we know 26 people watched it, or 390 billion, we have no idea”.

Top Gear
Top Gear
Chris Evans on Top Gear

He said he has “of course” kept an eye on Top Gear, which was taken over by Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc for the 2016 series, but that he does not watch it.

“Honestly I haven’t actually seen it since it rebooted,” he said.

BBC Radio 2 host Evans resigned from Top Gear after one series in July last year saying his best shot was “not enough”, after viewing figures plummeted.

Former Friends star LeBlanc returned to host the revamped 2017 series along with Chris Harris and Rory Reid, and the programme was praised by fans following Evans’ exit.

Clarkson said, of the current version of Top Gear: “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can, you have to learn to work 27 hours a day, seven days a week, you can’t have another job, it’s bloody hard work.”

Explaining why he will not watch Top Gear, he said: “It’s the same as when someone has a baby adopted they don’t go and peer through the windows of the house and that’s really what it feels like for me, it was my baby, it got taken away and I don’t really want to see what its new parents are doing with it.”

He added it “would be difficult to watch it because it was so much part of my life for 20 years”.

:: The Grand Tour returns to Amazon Prime Video on December 8