Latest / That Car Show / Cars & Bids’ Joe Berry Keys the Car

Transcript

Cars & Bids’ Joe Berry Keys the Car · That Car Show

• 0:00
  And then over the radio comes someone said, you know, car off
• 0:04
  the course, big crash, big crash.
• 0:07
  It's that car show, and today we are joined by our pal Joe Berry,
• 0:12
  the guy behind some of the wildest, most ambitious
• 0:15
  automotive films ever made. We're talking The Grand Tour,
• 0:19
  Top Gear, Petrolicious, and now Cars and Bids.
• 0:22
  New Channel Key Joe peels back the curtain on all of it, from
• 0:26
  the legendary Grand Tour opening sequence to the insane logistics
• 0:29
  behind global shoots and also the moments when things didn't
• 0:33
  go exactly the plan. Yeah, including that remote
• 0:36
  crash. We also get into the DNA of
• 0:38
  great car content, how British sensibilities shape the genre,
• 0:42
  what it was like working with Clarkson, Hammond and May, and
• 0:45
  why authenticity still matters more than anything else.
• 0:50
  Joe's the real deal. Cool as hell, insanely talented,
• 0:52
  and full of stories you've never heard before.
• 0:54
  It's Joe Berry and it's that car show.
• 1:00
  Welcome back to this week's That Car Show.
• 1:02
  And not only is it a all male affair, we actually have a bias
• 1:07
  this week for Britishness. So before I introduce our guest,
• 1:11
  we'll be talking about Jaguars. We will not be talking about
• 1:14
  trunks. We'll be shortening some of the
• 1:16
  things that seem to be very popular in America but are way
• 1:20
  over complicated. So I'm talking about eyeglasses,
• 1:22
  horseback riding, sidewalks. We're going glasses, horse
• 1:27
  riding and pavements. But welcome to this week's show,
• 1:32
  Joe Barry. Hello.
• 1:35
  Hello. Thanks for having me, boys.
• 1:37
  Big fan, and I mean that very earnestly.
• 1:39
  So thanks for having me on. I realized I should probably
• 1:43
  give you a bit of a formal introduction, Joe.
• 1:45
  So let me know how this is and you can tell me whether any and
• 1:48
  we'll establish why that's important based on your
• 1:50
  background in a minute. So ready.
• 1:52
  So today's guest is someone who played a key role behind the
• 1:55
  scenes at some of the most ambitious automotive shows ever
• 1:58
  made. Joe Berry is a creative producer
• 2:01
  and filmmaker who worked on The Grand Tour and was involved with
• 2:06
  producing some of the show's car focused films spanning Ideation,
• 2:10
  planning, execution and often across international complex
• 2:15
  shoots. He's worked alongside Clarkson,
• 2:18
  Hammond and May, contributing to a format that has redefined
• 2:22
  automotive storytelling at a global scale.
• 2:25
  Beyond that, Joe's experience includes writing for Top Gear
• 2:28
  America, producing content with Motor Trend, and giving a
• 2:33
  well-rounded perspective on the evolving automotive media
• 2:36
  landscape. More recently, he's brought that
• 2:40
  production and storytelling expertise into the digital
• 2:43
  marketplace space, working with Cars and Bids, helping shape how
• 2:47
  enthusiasts vehicles are presented, marketed and
• 2:50
  ultimately sold to highly engaged audiences.
• 2:54
  Joe, how was that for an introduction?
• 2:56
  Well, I don't know if I should be thanking you or ChatGPT, but
• 2:59
  either way, it was absolutely wonderful, Dan.
• 3:02
  We call that our research department.
• 3:04
  Just for future, we haven't got the big budgets that other shows
• 3:09
  have got. So Ryan, Ryan, how does it feel
• 3:14
  to be on a British show this week?
• 3:16
  Feels good. I like the Brits.
• 3:18
  You know they're smarter than we are, so you know, we all know.
• 3:20
  Don't believe? That problem.
• 3:21
  Yeah, don't tell us. Always the same branch there.
• 3:26
  Well, yeah, thanks for having me, boys.
• 3:28
  I'm glad to have you bring some. Yeah, bring some British backup
• 3:33
  for our boy Dan here. Dan and I, who have been, yeah,
• 3:38
  been become fast friends, I think it's fair to say, over the
• 3:40
  past sort of half a year. And yeah, I'm thrilled to be
• 3:43
  here. What is it about the Brits and
• 3:46
  really good car content? Is there a gene?
• 3:48
  I mean, like, you guys can't blink over there without getting
• 3:50
  a photo radar ticket and yet you're pumping out all this
• 3:53
  great car stuff like it's going out of style and feel like you
• 3:56
  always have, even going way back, you know?
• 3:59
  Yeah, it's an interesting one. That's a good question.
• 4:01
  And it's something you, I think you could get really deep on red
• 4:04
  or deep, but really sort of you could really drill into very
• 4:07
  quickly and sort of say that I think it's our sensibility when
• 4:10
  it comes to content, when it comes to the written word and,
• 4:12
  and, and, you know, video content and stuff.
• 4:14
  I think it comes down to the fact that, you know, we have
• 4:17
  this this slight sort of a Bashid nurse.
• 4:19
  We have this slight sort of sense of, of wanting to, to, you
• 4:23
  know, take the piss out of things and, and make things fun
• 4:26
  where they're not fun. And and, you know, traversely,
• 4:28
  when you've got something, something very fun in front of
• 4:29
  you, kind of treat it like a really boring thing or, you
• 4:32
  know, there's that sort of fun interplay that I think, you
• 4:35
  know, and again, I'm already thinking of, of Jeremy, who, you
• 4:37
  know, is, will obviously be the subject of a couple more than a
• 4:40
  couple of these answers, I'm sure.
• 4:41
  But, you know, what he did so well was subvert the, the sort
• 4:46
  of, you know, the space that he was born into, the space that he
• 4:50
  sort of moved into as a young man, right?
• 4:52
  Which was the really stuffy, really boring weekly newspapers
• 4:58
  and, and, and, you know, and motoring papers and classifieds
• 5:02
  and such. And, and he sort of took one
• 5:03
  look at that and thought, well, this is all well and good, but,
• 5:06
  you know, as well as being a nation who's, who has a great
• 5:10
  engineering background and who love cars, we're also a nation
• 5:14
  who of, of, you know, incredible comedians.
• 5:16
  And, and, and, you know, the stuff that Ian and Andy Willman
• 5:19
  and the other guys separately at the time, Richard and James were
• 5:22
  kind of ingesting things like the Fast Show and, you know,
• 5:26
  Mortimer and Reeves and all those kinds of, you know, what
• 5:30
  were then quite sort of edgy, you know, 1980s, nineteen 90s
• 5:34
  comedians that all kind of, you know, got together and, and,
• 5:38
  and, you know, the Crucible that was Jeremy's sort of torrid mind
• 5:42
  sort of created that. Yeah.
• 5:45
  Not to get into the Grand Tour and all that stuff too quickly,
• 5:47
  but I but I think it does go to sort of it suffices to kind of
• 5:51
  to answer the question, which is that, you know, we have cool
• 5:53
  cars and, and a desire to do things with them.
• 5:56
  And, and I think where the American propensity might be to
• 5:59
  kind of go on an epic road trip and, you know, go cross country
• 6:04
  or go to, you know, go out to Death Valley because you guys
• 6:06
  have that stuff. We kind of don't.
• 6:08
  Like, we do have a beautiful countryside and stuff, But, but
• 6:11
  as you've said, Ryan, it's a pain in the ass to drive to the
• 6:14
  countryside mostly. And you've usually picked up a
• 6:17
  either a flat tyre or a a speeding ticket or, you know,
• 6:21
  whatever. You've got a dodgy tummy from
• 6:23
  something you ate on the motorway services.
• 6:24
  So yeah, I don't know. We kind of have to look inwards
• 6:28
  I guess. And that's where our stuff gets
• 6:31
  silly, which I I've always personally, yeah.
• 6:35
  Dan, can you second this this? Yeah.
• 6:38
  I mean, I think it's, I, I think you, you hit it right on the
• 6:41
  spot, right, in terms of there was a melting pot of things
• 6:44
  going on in the 80s and 90s. And, you know, escapism was
• 6:50
  either comedy or, you know, entertainment of some sort.
• 6:53
  And you know, when when those folks hit the screen and we
• 6:57
  wanted something to watch on a Sunday night, it was a great way
• 7:01
  to kind of relax after a weekend and, and, you know, before
• 7:05
  having to think about the week. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:08
  I'll never forget watching my first episode of Top Gear.
• 7:10
  Remember my dad saying you got to watch this thing, it's on
• 7:12
  cable or whatever. You know, it's unlike anything
• 7:14
  you've ever seen. And I was blown away, like,
• 7:17
  because I had never seen anything like that, You know, it
• 7:20
  was so different from what we had here.
• 7:22
  And it was irreverent and it was funny and it was original and it
• 7:26
  was just, you know, it was the best thing ever.
• 7:28
  It's just, it was such a moment, right?
• 7:30
  You know that first time watching so Oh yeah, escapism
• 7:34
  for sure. Yeah.
• 7:35
  Oh yeah. And as as a, you know, as a
• 7:36
  young, without wishing to, to, to to offend you, Ryan, I think
• 7:40
  I'm maybe got a couple of, I think we've got a couple of ears
• 7:43
  on me. And so I was working.
• 7:45
  You know you don't say yeah. Not that you look any of the
• 7:50
  worst for it. I Top Gear was rebooted. 33 by
• 7:54
  the way. Oh wow, I'm.
• 7:56
  Just a really, really tough pipe around.
• 8:01
  We call them City Miles Joe. Boy, oh boy, I'm kidding.
• 8:08
  But Top Gear was rebooted I think in 2002.
• 8:10
  So I was, I was like a 1112 year old, you know.
• 8:14
  So for me it was your, you know, for you guys, it was escapism,
• 8:18
  you know, a couple of years older than me.
• 8:20
  But for me it was, you know, it was seeing three or two 6 foot
• 8:25
  plus men and 15 foot six men acting like the 11 year old they
• 8:29
  then would go and see at school the next day.
• 8:32
  And so it was just, yeah, it was magic.
• 8:34
  And it was, yeah, it was a real moment in time, you know, often
• 8:38
  repeated but never really sort of bested, I think it's fair to
• 8:43
  say. But yeah.
• 8:45
  And that's just one small part of I think, or they are just one
• 8:49
  small part of the great relationship between Britain and
• 8:53
  the motor car. You know, again, without wishing
• 8:56
  to get all Encyclopedia Britannica, sorry, Ryan, but you
• 9:00
  know, we could go and talk about history and stuff.
• 9:02
  But it's more, for me, it's more, you know, the other great
• 9:04
  love was growing up was Formula One.
• 9:06
  And and Formula One I don't think it does anymore.
• 9:11
  But truly to me, it always felt like a British sport.
• 9:15
  And I don't mean that in a sort of a nationalistic kind of, you
• 9:19
  know, I, I don't mean to sort of do anyone out of their dues.
• 9:22
  And, and of course, you know, Ferrari, arguably the backbone
• 9:26
  of F1 and, you know, for the past 75 years and they're
• 9:28
  obviously not a British team. But I think between the, you
• 9:32
  know, that sort of Crescent moon around London of, of the
• 9:36
  motorsport, you know, the motorsport valley, I can see Dan
• 9:39
  nodding there. You know, where not just F1, but
• 9:41
  you know, pro drive and lots of rally teams and, and, you know,
• 9:45
  motorbike teams and everything, you know, they're all in that
• 9:48
  sort of that beautiful little area there.
• 9:50
  And, you know, all the, all the shared engineering and, and
• 9:53
  knowledge that goes on there has just created this amazing
• 9:56
  village industry. And yeah, and I think that sort
• 9:59
  of that sort of really for me, calcified the idea that F1 was,
• 10:04
  was kind of ours. That plus the fact that we had
• 10:06
  this sort of, you know, trio of dastardly Bond villains running
• 10:10
  the shop at the time. And, and they were, you know,
• 10:14
  obviously, obviously British, you know, God, God, humor and
• 10:18
  all that. So, yeah, I think F1, I think
• 10:22
  Top Gear, I think, you know, all the great magazines we've had
• 10:26
  EVO, Auto Express and, you know, all the people that have that
• 10:29
  have fostered and come through that system.
• 10:31
  You know, I think that's why and that, you know, that's why we
• 10:33
  have such a rich tapestry, let's call it Dan.
• 10:39
  How am I doing? Am I doing a good enough job to
• 10:40
  sell? Yeah, when it doesn't need to be
• 10:44
  sold, but yeah, absolutely. So who was your who were your F1
• 10:48
  heroes growing up? Do you know what it's this is?
• 10:51
  That's a very pertinent question because for a couple of reasons.
• 10:55
  So being British, my, my father's a big Jaguar guy.
• 11:02
  Jaguar, that is. Ryan, I'll hear.
• 11:04
  That that's right, I can't say it that way to save my life,
• 11:07
  but. I Oh, well, yeah, it's pretty
• 11:08
  good actually. Funnily enough, with with when
• 11:11
  we were doing Top Gear America, we did an episode on saving
• 11:15
  Jaguar and Dax Shepard was the, the lead host of that theories
• 11:19
  and he for the life of him couldn't say it.
• 11:21
  He, he, but he also couldn't say Jaguar because I don't know,
• 11:25
  some, some kind of strange Michigan twang that he had.
• 11:29
  So he, he was calling it a Jaguar, which, which is always
• 11:32
  of the, of the many butcherings of that name, Jaguar always
• 11:37
  amongst the worst. But anyway, I'm, I, I, I
• 11:40
  digress. My dad's a big Jaguar fan,
• 11:43
  always has been and you know, and, and, and that was how he
• 11:47
  and I bonded cars was our thing. That's how we we bonded, you
• 11:51
  know, and I was like the kid who was writing sort of school
• 11:53
  reports on on, you know, the like why Jaguar changed the
• 11:57
  nomic picture from S to XK after the war, you know, the.
• 12:03
  That's a good move. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:06
  Like that was very genuine. I genuinely wrote that.
• 12:09
  I love that, that like 7 or 8 years old, you know, I loved all
• 12:11
  that stuff. So Jack, so Jag.
• 12:13
  So obviously the Jag F1 team was was, I was going to say
• 12:16
  prominent. They were never prominent, but
• 12:18
  they were there. And those cars looked awesome
• 12:21
  with the HSBC libraries. And I think Christian Horner was
• 12:24
  team boss back then, right? Or he certainly came to be.
• 12:26
  Remember, didn't Jackie Stewart have an involvement?
• 12:29
  Is that right? I didn't know that.
• 12:30
  And then Bobby Ray Hall, I think was a principal for like a
• 12:34
  little while. I think this is a long time ago,
• 12:37
  but yeah, I think Irvine raced for them.
• 12:41
  Did he? Oh yeah, there was Andy Mark
• 12:43
  Webber was there as a as a rookie.
• 12:45
  Like it was a really interesting.
• 12:47
  I mean, again, I, I sort of I was just there with with the
• 12:49
  sort of a blind, you know, abandoned, you know, and that my
• 12:52
  dad liked them. So I liked them.
• 12:53
  But. But the more I've sort of
• 12:56
  because because they, you know, sadly, they went and sort of
• 12:58
  never came back. So so as I've sort of
• 13:00
  retroactively looked back and read up on the history, yeah,
• 13:04
  it's been quite a nice thing. But but it's interesting you ask
• 13:07
  that Ryan, really, because I've just finished bouncing all over
• 13:11
  the place. But I just finished Andy
• 13:13
  Willman's book, Mr. Willman's Motoring Adventure, which is
• 13:17
  about, you know, his his Life and Times with there me and
• 13:22
  getting Top Gear started and and then moving on to the ground.
• 13:25
  So but in that book, I literally finished it on the plane
• 13:28
  yesterday. He was talking about when he and
• 13:31
  Jeremy got to interview Michael Schumacher for ABBC.
• 13:36
  One series they did called I think the Science of Speed.
• 13:40
  So it wasn't a Top Gear thing. It was like one of these
• 13:42
  slightly sort of off brand, you know, I think the BBC had Jeremy
• 13:46
  and they didn't quite know what to do with him in between that
• 13:49
  period where there was old Top Gear and then.
• 13:52
  So they sort of sent him out. He did motor, he did Motor
• 13:55
  World, Jeremy Clarkson's Motoring World and Motor world
• 13:57
  at one point, which is awesome. And yeah, science of speed.
• 14:01
  And in that they interviewed Michael Schumacher.
• 14:04
  And I won't, you know, I won't just reel the book back off at
• 14:09
  you guys. But Andy basically says that,
• 14:12
  you know, you know, and he's met a person or two in his time and
• 14:15
  he says that Michael was, was the, you know, the the nicest,
• 14:19
  the kindest, the most, you know, giving with his time, just the
• 14:22
  most absolute gentleman. And it got me thinking about him
• 14:26
  because. And this is where, forgive me,
• 14:29
  dad, because, because, you know, hindsight's 2020 and, and
• 14:33
  obviously we were all aware of the terrible thing that happened
• 14:36
  with, with poor Michael, but my dad absolutely hated Michael
• 14:40
  Schumacher. And so I absolutely hated him.
• 14:43
  And I just, I just had this sort of, you know, again, sort of
• 14:48
  there was this red mist whenever anyone mentioned it because he
• 14:50
  was just going through such a period of domination, obviously.
• 14:53
  Well, he we, you know, he obviously had his early win and
• 14:55
  then he had the couple of fellow years with Ferrari.
• 14:57
  But after that, that sort of early 2000s, you know, he was
• 15:01
  just dominating, which is, you know, we showed obviously
• 15:04
  incredible engineering from the team and incredible
• 15:07
  sportsmanship from him. Well, not sportsmanship because
• 15:09
  he could be kind of a bugger, but but you know what I mean,
• 15:12
  like incredible focus and dedication and athleticism.
• 15:15
  But I just as a young impressionable kid, I hated him,
• 15:19
  which is obviously, you know, not, you know, was not sort of
• 15:24
  grounded in rationale. And I've absolutely obviously
• 15:27
  kind of come to come to, you know, free myself of my father's
• 15:31
  like hateful shackles in the in the years since.
• 15:33
  And I I recognize that he, you know, you know, Lewis, greatest
• 15:38
  driver of all time. Yes, the numbers, the numbers
• 15:41
  suggest it. I think he's had races that
• 15:43
  would back that claim up in a more sort of holistic sense.
• 15:47
  But then you look at Michael and you say, well, he's got every
• 15:51
  bit as much, you know, behind the wheel talent as, you know,
• 15:55
  the other luminaries that you could count on one hand.
• 15:57
  And, and I would say that's Lewis.
• 15:59
  I would say that's Max, another person who I don't love, but I
• 16:02
  can't help but, you know, respect.
• 16:05
  And then, you know, Michael Ayrton and I mean, gosh, I, I,
• 16:10
  I've sort of pat hinted myself into a corner by saying that I
• 16:13
  could count them on one hand because there's definitely three
• 16:15
  or four more people, a couple of them Brits that could fill that
• 16:18
  fifth spot. But my point being, you know,
• 16:20
  there are, there are awesome drivers and then there are those
• 16:25
  who were just born to drive and found their way into, into the
• 16:28
  formula, you know, one series and Michael's definitely one of
• 16:32
  them. And, and you just look at like,
• 16:33
  who was around him? Who was he fighting?
• 16:35
  You know, the car, the, the struggles they had with the car
• 16:38
  and some of the performances he was able to get out of that.
• 16:40
  Like, I know Lewis is the greatest on, on on paper, but I,
• 16:44
  I would still, you know, possibly throw Michael's name,
• 16:50
  you know, into that ring still. I think.
• 16:53
  Phenomenal. So growing up in the UK, was the
• 16:57
  dream always to work in television and was it always to
• 17:00
  be in motorsport or automotive at least?
• 17:03
  The dream was, the dream was undefined because I just didn't
• 17:09
  really know. I never really had a firm grasp
• 17:12
  of what I wanted to do. I can look back now and say, OK,
• 17:16
  well, I was like, I'm, you know, I'm quite a sort of sensitive,
• 17:21
  quite anxious soul, but I was like a, but I, but I also loved
• 17:25
  public speaking. I was always trying to be in the
• 17:27
  school plays and always trying to sort of like be the one who
• 17:30
  like spoke in front of the class and all that kind of stuff.
• 17:32
  So, so you know, and I, I'm, I'm, I'm dyslexic, something
• 17:38
  that I, I, something that I, I didn't know until I was in
• 17:41
  college and university. That was when my, my tutor said,
• 17:45
  Hey, your essays are fantastic, but your, your tests are all
• 17:49
  absolutely terrible. You know, we think we should
• 17:53
  test you for, for dyslexia. It just turns out that whenever
• 17:55
  you put a, a stopwatch in my face, I just turn to mush.
• 17:58
  And I sort of think I'm writing this like beautiful prose and
• 18:01
  it's absolute garbage. So anyway, you know, I was a
• 18:04
  little bit anxious, but I loved performing, I loved writing, but
• 18:08
  I sort of never really got any encouragement to do it because
• 18:12
  it was always kind of what I was thinking and and what what was
• 18:16
  coming out was never quite, they never quite aligned.
• 18:19
  And so I just never really had a firm grasp on, on what I wanted
• 18:22
  to do. And I went to culinary school
• 18:25
  very briefly because, yeah, because that was something that
• 18:29
  was like a there was like A cause and effect between like, I
• 18:32
  can do this and it and it looks and tastes good and stuff.
• 18:35
  So that was kind of for a moment, I thought about that.
• 18:37
  But, and again, I've got to credit my dad, who my dad left
• 18:43
  school at 14, got into the trades.
• 18:45
  Carpenter, you know, still works six days a week now.
• 18:49
  Like it's just an absolute grinder.
• 18:51
  But he had the the beautiful sort of foresight to say just
• 18:56
  before I was about to sort of sign on to go and do proper, you
• 18:59
  know, proper culinary school and really commit to that life.
• 19:03
  He sort of said, I think, you know, I think you're bound for
• 19:06
  sort of more creative things. I think you should, I think you
• 19:08
  should give that a try. And and so, yeah, television
• 19:11
  kind of which it was obviously was a medium I was always
• 19:14
  interested in who isn't what, what young man isn't sort of
• 19:17
  fascinated by TV and the idea of making things and document.
• 19:22
  You know, I was always, you know, furtive watcher of
• 19:25
  documentaries and sort of that late night stuff you'd find on
• 19:27
  BBC about like abstract, you know, like Jane Goodall in the
• 19:31
  in the forest with the monkeys and all that kind of stuff.
• 19:36
  And that really, you know, from my dad who, who had no right to
• 19:38
  say that. Like he didn't know that I could
• 19:40
  go and do that, but he just sort of threw it out there and it
• 19:42
  really lodged with me. And so we're very quickly
• 19:45
  fixated on that. And yeah, got myself, I, I was a
• 19:49
  late administer to, to university.
• 19:51
  I hadn't applied to uni's because I was going to go do
• 19:53
  this catering thing. And and yeah, so I got into a
• 19:57
  university that I could just about scrape into with quite
• 20:00
  mediocre grades because again, dyslexic didn't know it yet.
• 20:03
  And and studied like ATV production career with an
• 20:07
  emphasis on writing. Again, because I sort of had
• 20:10
  this feeling like I know I have ideas, I know I'm creative.
• 20:14
  Like I'm not a shy retiring wallflower.
• 20:16
  Anyone who's listened through the 1st 20 minutes of this
• 20:19
  podcast, poor souls will know that I'd like to talk and I like
• 20:22
  to have ideas and I like to bounce around and whatever.
• 20:26
  And so, yeah, writing and stuff and, and but then cars, cars was
• 20:29
  the obvious, you know, what do I know more about than most
• 20:32
  people? What can I offer more to a
• 20:34
  future employer, you know, than anyone else?
• 20:39
  Cars. So that was kind of where those
• 20:40
  two ideas came. And then from that sort of, you
• 20:42
  know, he man moment of the sword and the stone, it was like,
• 20:47
  yeah, it has to be Top Gear. I was like 20, you know, 20
• 20:51
  maybe. And I was like, I've got to work
• 20:52
  on Top Gear. That's amazing.
• 20:56
  I mean, here in the States we had one car show on television.
• 20:59
  It was called Motor Week. Yeah.
• 21:02
  Yeah, I have all the respect for the, the, I mean those guys, but
• 21:05
  it was such a a different didn't quite inspire in the same way.
• 21:09
  I think that that Top Gear probably did for, for for you.
• 21:13
  But then how do you make that that jump then to OK, I'm
• 21:16
  actually now working there. Yeah, so I, I rounded out my
• 21:20
  university degree and, and as is the way with the, you know,
• 21:25
  yeah, the unique way that the, the United Kingdom university
• 21:31
  sort of, you know, graduation procedure is structured, they
• 21:34
  kind of go, OK, here you go. And then you're like, now what,
• 21:36
  you know, there's no, there was like, no, I really sort of, if
• 21:39
  there's I'm, I'm pretty easygoing and I sort of tend
• 21:42
  like my wife's that the kind of angry person who sort of is
• 21:44
  still angry about something that happened to her 20 years ago.
• 21:47
  I've sort of forgiven everything, you know, I.
• 21:49
  What's the secret, Joe? What's because I'm with your
• 21:52
  wife? How do I work through this?
• 21:54
  How do I how do I level up? What do I do?
• 21:57
  I think it's just, I think it's just that ignorance is bliss, to
• 21:59
  be honest with you. I just like to sort of, I like
• 22:01
  to just reset every night and just empty my brain, empty the
• 22:05
  recycle bin in my of my brain and just wake up afresh in the
• 22:08
  morning. But but yeah, I've forgiven, you
• 22:11
  know, everything, all of the, all of the many injustices.
• 22:14
  But I, I will not and will never forgive for me and for the
• 22:18
  millions of others of us that went through the, the sort of
• 22:20
  university system in the, in the, the, you know, I graduated
• 22:23
  in 2012. The lack of careers advice, they
• 22:26
  kind of just shoved you into it was the last, mine was exactly
• 22:30
  the last year that university fees were capped relatively low.
• 22:34
  So I was only paying sort of £3000 per year to attend
• 22:37
  university. And because of that, or not
• 22:39
  because of that, I'm not sure where the cause and effects
• 22:41
  come. I'm not really up on the
• 22:43
  economics of it, but, but what I'm trying to say was like
• 22:46
  everyone was at university basically, like anybody could
• 22:48
  get into college and some good colleges, you know, and, and
• 22:52
  there was just this kind of like culture of, of cramming you into
• 22:57
  a course that, you know, the first course you said you were
• 22:59
  interested in, you're doing that and then nothing.
• 23:01
  And you sort of come out of the other end of it and you go, OK,
• 23:04
  now I've got this. I didn't even get a piece of
• 23:05
  paper. I actually never got a
• 23:07
  certificate anyway. I'm just remembering that now.
• 23:10
  But yeah, you're sort of like, what do I do?
• 23:12
  So you know, as all good self respecting people do, I move
• 23:16
  back in with my parents which lasted for two months before
• 23:22
  again my dad we we were washing his Jaguar XKR one Sunday
• 23:29
  afternoon. Quality vehicle, yeah.
• 23:30
  Lovely car, a lovely car and very affordable now, worryingly
• 23:36
  so that kind of, that's one of those cars that are that sort of
• 23:39
  scares me. Get them on auction sites are
• 23:40
  here. Yeah, well, if you know any good
• 23:43
  auction sites down, let me know. But come.
• 23:47
  On for that later. Yes, we will.
• 23:49
  But he he said, look, you can say with us all you want, but
• 23:53
  like you're not doing anything. So get, get down, get down to
• 23:56
  London, get down to that big London.
• 23:58
  You know, I grew up in Shropshire, rural Shropshire.
• 24:00
  It's sort of on the Welsh, on the borders with Wales.
• 24:03
  They're very rural. You know, my grandparents were
• 24:06
  farmers like my, you know, so, so yeah, he said get down to
• 24:10
  London, get yourself ATV job. I put in over 100 CVS resumes
• 24:15
  into, into every sort of, you know, TV position I could find
• 24:19
  and nothing came of it. So I took, I did the next best
• 24:23
  thing and got a job at a bar next to ATV production company.
• 24:27
  My rationale being there would be producers in there either
• 24:31
  celebrating or drowning their sorrows.
• 24:33
  And I would, you know, I would get to eventually sort of
• 24:36
  interface with these people and yeah, after a couple of months,
• 24:38
  got a job with someone. It's genius.
• 24:42
  Oh, thank you, Brian. Thank you.
• 24:44
  It was the my first TV job was on a show called Geordie Shore,
• 24:48
  which is our version of Jersey Shore that that luminary of of
• 24:54
  educational television. Brian was reminiscing about that
• 24:59
  show. Watched every single one Joe.
• 25:02
  I no regrets, but I cannot imagine how that translated, I
• 25:07
  guess to the Uki guess. Yeah, it was.
• 25:10
  You tell us. But.
• 25:11
  Yeah, it was, it was, it was messy.
• 25:13
  It was like, I'm sort of, yeah, pretty, pretty gross.
• 25:16
  It was supposed to say it was what I was trying to do, you
• 25:20
  know, It wasn't, it wasn't who I was, you know, but it, but it
• 25:22
  was a job. It was great.
• 25:24
  And then basically for the next sort of 2:00-ish years, I
• 25:27
  basically within my little freelance bubble that was sort
• 25:31
  of growing, I just tried to, to get closer and I sound like a
• 25:34
  stalker or something that I was just trying to get closer to Top
• 25:37
  Gear. I was at every move I was making
• 25:39
  was, well, obviously the, the first question I'd asked myself
• 25:42
  was, does this job pay? Do I need the money?
• 25:44
  You know, I was living in a, an attic in a, in a place down in
• 25:48
  South London. The rent was £525 a month, like
• 25:53
  it was, you know, the good old days comparatively.
• 25:55
  And, and so I'd sort of would, you know, was earning, I was
• 25:57
  earning peanuts, but spending peanuts.
• 25:59
  And I was basically just plotting this map and trying to
• 26:01
  get to Top Gear, even though I knew it would be a long shot,
• 26:03
  even though I knew that that show has like historically low
• 26:06
  turnover. No one ever leaves, you know,
• 26:10
  And, yeah. And I was just trying to sort of
• 26:12
  get my way there. And I I managed to sort of have
• 26:14
  some fun along the way. And I got to do some cool stuff
• 26:18
  at the BBC. I did a documentary.
• 26:20
  I spent a week with Professor Stephen Hawking.
• 26:25
  I'm not sure. Yeah.
• 26:26
  I'm. I'm not sure what.
• 26:28
  Yeah. How if we're allowed to still
• 26:31
  celebrate him. I'm not sure what's going on
• 26:33
  there politically, culturally, or I don't know what.
• 26:36
  I probably shouldn't have brought it up, but but I got to
• 26:38
  spend a week with him and that was a special experience for me
• 26:41
  as a 21 year old. Like it was, it was, you know,
• 26:44
  it was, you know, and that was kind of BBC science.
• 26:46
  And I was like, Oh my gosh, all right, I'm now in, I've got BBC
• 26:48
  e-mail. I can do this.
• 26:51
  Hey, at least you were 21, Joe. Yeah.
• 26:52
  Yeah, yeah. And and well, I may have been a
• 26:55
  little bit, I might have been 22 or something like that.
• 26:57
  But anyway, anyway, and then and then Jeremy had the famous Fraca
• 27:05
  with the producer of Top Gear. They had their physical
• 27:11
  altercation and Top Gear got suspended and, and that was sort
• 27:14
  of dreams dashed for me and, you know, probably thousands of
• 27:17
  other people. And so I sort of went back into,
• 27:21
  you know, just doing whatever I was doing.
• 27:22
  I think I was working on a television programme about
• 27:25
  tattoo removal. Fascinating subjects for another
• 27:28
  time, and it was my. Questions.
• 27:32
  Yeah, right. And it was my birthday.
• 27:34
  It was my twenty. It was my 25th birthday
• 27:37
  actually, so I may have skewed the numbers there.
• 27:39
  I don't. I mean, I worked in TV for a few
• 27:40
  years before, before the car thing happened.
• 27:42
  It was my 24th birthday, 24th, and I got a call from Andy
• 27:49
  Willman and it was like, hello, it's Andy.
• 27:52
  And I basically, I'd sent my CV in just offhand.
• 27:55
  When, when, you know, when, when I saw that they'd penned the
• 27:58
  deal with Amazon, I sent in a resume and a covering letter.
• 28:02
  And I got this call from this lovely gruff voice.
• 28:05
  And, you know, he sort of didn't give, didn't give anything away,
• 28:07
  but said come in for a meeting next week.
• 28:09
  And I went in for a meeting and he was late, which if anyone
• 28:14
  here knows Andy will know that's par for the course.
• 28:17
  But he had brought 2 coffees, 1 black, 1 white.
• 28:19
  And he said, which one do you want?
• 28:20
  And I said, I drink black coffee.
• 28:22
  And he said, well, you can have the one with milk in it because
• 28:25
  I drink black. It's like, fine, I'm not going
• 28:29
  to argue with you. And yeah, we had a lovely chat.
• 28:33
  I obviously lost my head as soon as I got in there and started
• 28:36
  talking about owning all the, you know, straight to VHS Jeremy
• 28:40
  Clarkson videos and this and that.
• 28:43
  And the rub of it was you're like this, boys.
• 28:46
  He had, oh, he firstly had a stack of CVS, you know, this
• 28:50
  high on his desk, but mine was there.
• 28:53
  And he made a point. Such a theatrical man of picking
• 28:56
  it up off the pile and and saying this is your, this is
• 29:01
  your CV, right? And it was my resume with my
• 29:04
  cover letter that I'd written staple to the front.
• 29:07
  And he turned it over, turned, opened it up so I could see the
• 29:10
  CV and the CV had a giant Red Cross through it like a, like a
• 29:13
  comically placed, comically thick, sharky giant Red Cross to
• 29:18
  it. Because my resume did not have
• 29:20
  any car stuff on it. Right.
• 29:21
  I had done, I'd cleaned up the sick of some, some, you know,
• 29:25
  idiots in Newcastle. I had removed some tattoos.
• 29:29
  I had, yes, I'd worked with, you know, Stephen Hawking.
• 29:32
  I'd done a few other films and and and shows but like nothing.
• 29:35
  That's a hell of ACV. It was, it was eclectic, let's
• 29:39
  call it that. And, and, and, and so, yeah, you
• 29:43
  know that on that on merit of that alone, it was a big fat no
• 29:46
  from Andy. However, he then folded the the
• 29:50
  cover letter back to the front and and that had a nice little
• 29:53
  little and it wasn't even green, which I mean, you know,
• 29:56
  narratively speaking, if the cross was red, green for my
• 30:00
  feelings, but actually it was black, I guess, and it was a
• 30:02
  tick. And he basically said, look,
• 30:04
  you're covering letter where I'd written about love of cars, love
• 30:08
  of Formula One, you know, relationship with my dad and how
• 30:11
  much that it influenced, you know, who I am, blah, blah,
• 30:13
  blah. That was what got me the job.
• 30:15
  And yeah, it was, it was, you know, that that sort of, I
• 30:19
  suppose is, is, is proof that you should always write a little
• 30:22
  note, I guess, because that really did sort of make my life
• 30:25
  in, in a lot of ways, you know? Yeah, Yeah.
• 30:28
  And then we were away after that.
• 30:29
  That was it. Wow, what was the feeling like
• 30:32
  walking out of that meeting? Yeah, unbelievably surreal, very
• 30:36
  genuine. Sort of.
• 30:37
  It's funny, isn't it, How in the moment you just sort of deal
• 30:40
  with it. You move through it and you go,
• 30:41
  yeah, cool. But the more I was would look
• 30:44
  back on it, the more I think this is, you know, how many
• 30:46
  people and I've got. I don't want to sound like, you
• 30:48
  know, I know I just got to work on a television show.
• 30:51
  I know it's not, you know, solving world hunger or
• 30:55
  anything, you know, even remotely important, but how many
• 30:59
  people get to achieve a dream? And I was like 24 and I was, I
• 31:02
  had this chance to do this thing.
• 31:04
  You know, it was really a golden ticket moment.
• 31:06
  It was a, a real, yeah, a real wow moment, quickly followed by
• 31:11
  a oh, shit moment because it was quite the quite the three years.
• 31:15
  It was quite the experience. Did you work on from episode 1
• 31:21
  all the way through? Yeah.
• 31:23
  So I was, I was trying to wait this morning so that I could be
• 31:27
  accurate. And I, I should say as well, you
• 31:30
  know, I worked on, so I worked on.
• 31:32
  I went from 2015 when when the boys signed, the boys signed in
• 31:35
  like August. They hired me in September.
• 31:37
  We shot the first films in October and November and then we
• 31:43
  were all way to the races. And then, yeah, that was season
• 31:45
  1. I did season 1, which was 1516,
• 31:48
  season 2 and then about half a season 3.
• 31:52
  So I did that sort of two 2015 to 2018, the sort of real run of
• 31:57
  films that made-up the 36 episodes of TV.
• 32:01
  That was my stint. But I should say, you know,
• 32:05
  like, Even so, even though I was there for those like 3 years, I
• 32:09
  still only played a small part. You know, you're like a junior
• 32:11
  producer and then you're a producer, you know, you like, I
• 32:14
  have to say there's, there was a, you know, an incredibly
• 32:16
  talented team. You know, there was, we were
• 32:20
  small. It was a small team.
• 32:21
  It would be like 3 researchers, 3 junior producers, 3 producers,
• 32:25
  2 directors and then, you know, Andy and, and, and the higher
• 32:29
  ups, the series producer and, and the boys and such.
• 32:32
  It was still only like, oh, and then like the other side of the
• 32:34
  office was, was all the sort of money and the, the logistics and
• 32:37
  stuff. So there was still only like
• 32:38
  maybe 25 of us at full tilt. But still, you know, it was I,
• 32:44
  I'm, I hasten to add that I was a part of a team and not some
• 32:47
  kind of like, you know, genius, genius savant that was kind of
• 32:51
  there pulling the strings. But you know the.
• 32:55
  The the first episode, there was rumors when it came out that it
• 32:59
  was spending a large amount of Amazon's budget on the opening
• 33:04
  scene. Well, what what was the planning
• 33:06
  like and what was the actual story behind that?
• 33:08
  And for those who have not seen that opening scene, go on to
• 33:11
  Amazon and watch it. It's epic.
• 33:14
  It is a good one. And I want to put you up on one
• 33:16
  thing you say, Dan, which was you said that we were spending
• 33:18
  Amazon's money. The funny thing about that is,
• 33:22
  and this speaks to what, you know, terrible businessman
• 33:25
  Jeremy James, Richard and Andy are were are once they signed
• 33:32
  the papers and got that big chunk.
• 33:34
  But basically what the what the contract was, was Amazon gives
• 33:38
  the production company that the boys set up a big chunk of
• 33:41
  money, a really big chunk of money.
• 33:43
  And they have to deliver in, in, in, you know, in receiving that
• 33:47
  they have to deliver 36 episodes of what was legally termed first
• 33:53
  class content. That was like, that was the term
• 33:56
  that was put in the contracts. There was no so so you know,
• 33:59
  we're conventionally in TV. You will have to before you get
• 34:03
  in, you know, anywhere near the money you have to present the
• 34:05
  budget. That'll be, you know, gone over
• 34:08
  with a fine tooth come. They'll probably the channel
• 34:09
  will probably say right, OK, but we're not going to give you that
• 34:11
  much for that because we don't like that idea blah, blah, blah.
• 34:14
  This was done completely the opposite way.
• 34:16
  It was like here's, you know, many 10s of 10s of 10s of 10s of
• 34:20
  millions of dollars pounds deliver us some TV and you guys
• 34:25
  keep the leftovers. That was what the boys got paid
• 34:27
  out of was the was whatever was leftover.
• 34:30
  So when we then, when Jeremy then started, you know, having
• 34:35
  these massive brain waves about epic, you know, Mad Max style
• 34:40
  desert sequences in California, he wasn't spending Amazon's
• 34:45
  money really. He was spending his own because
• 34:46
  he could have just done a very conventional, you know, intro or
• 34:51
  or, you know, done the same thing, but in in in Ludlow, you
• 34:54
  know, and it would have cost nothing, you know, but he
• 34:57
  decided to go big. Same with the tent, you know the
• 34:59
  tent moving around the world for our first season that was like
• 35:03
  that was like five 6,000,000 lbs when it you know, for that first
• 35:08
  season when it could have been ATV studio that would have cost
• 35:11
  them. You know, I don't know what 100
• 35:13
  grand for the whole. That makes it all the much, you
• 35:16
  know, all the more cool. You know, I mean, that's just,
• 35:19
  that's so cool. That is so cool.
• 35:21
  And there was so much riding on those first few seconds and he
• 35:25
  knew that, right? You know it was got to be all or
• 35:27
  nothing, right? Oh, yeah, And that was his.
• 35:29
  That was his, you know, that is his.
• 35:33
  His genius, I suppose, is, is knowing what the moment demands,
• 35:39
  what the people want, you know, having the narrative worked out,
• 35:43
  not just the narrative of the thing that we're that we were
• 35:45
  trying to craft, but the whole narrative.
• 35:47
  You know, when he sort of told us, when it filtered down to us,
• 35:51
  I guess, that we were going to do this thing.
• 35:53
  And, you know, you, you think about it or if you read it off a
• 35:56
  piece of paper, Jeremy looking for law.
• 35:58
  And I think he's like, you know, greasy Spoon Cafe, isn't he?
• 36:01
  Or something, having a cup of tea, you know, looking sad.
• 36:04
  Well, respectfully, mate, you're sad because you've got fired
• 36:06
  because you punch somebody like, like, and, and, and, you know,
• 36:09
  he's the first to admit that like, he's not, you know, he was
• 36:12
  not bashful about that. You know, you know, something
• 36:15
  happened and he got reprimanded for it.
• 36:17
  He handed himself in at the BBC. And that's, you know, so, you
• 36:20
  know, so when we heard these things, they, they, they sort of
• 36:23
  some of us in the office were a bit like, OK, I don't know about
• 36:27
  this. Some of this you know in the the
• 36:28
  song the hot house flowers version of right the I forget
• 36:32
  the name. Clearly now, yeah.
• 36:35
  All these things, you know, it was like, right, OK, you know,
• 36:39
  and obviously you're going to do it.
• 36:40
  You're going to obviously make it happen for Jeremy.
• 36:42
  But but some of us didn't see the vision And I was I was
• 36:45
  definitely one of those. It was like, this is weird.
• 36:47
  We're a car show. Can we just do, you know, this
• 36:49
  week on the Grand Tour, you know, Jeremy trousers fall down,
• 36:53
  James, you know, gets drunk, whatever.
• 36:55
  But but no, you know, and yeah. And so we set about doing this
• 37:00
  thing which which was, you know, which meant, you know, get in.
• 37:03
  I think it was like 150 cars for that, for that open opening
• 37:06
  scene. And they, you know, they trailed
• 37:09
  everyone in. And, you know, again, sounds
• 37:11
  very easy to go and drive on a dry light bed.
• 37:13
  And, and, you know, it really isn't, it's, you know,
• 37:16
  especially at that scale, it's unbelievably complex and
• 37:19
  complicated. And, you know, the tent we had
• 37:22
  the, we had the tent there, we were having a music festival
• 37:25
  obviously with the hot house flowers.
• 37:26
  And it was just, you know, and, and, and we were still, bear in
• 37:31
  mind, still filming actual epis, like films to go and make
• 37:36
  episodes. You know, we'd had such a
• 37:38
  truncated sort of planning process and then was like get to
• 37:41
  shooting, get to shooting and and we were still sort of
• 37:44
  catching our tails meanwhile trying to do this, you know,
• 37:47
  sort of orchestrate this world tour with this you huge epic
• 37:50
  sort of Mad Max set piece. It really was amazing.
• 37:53
  And I went and rewatched it because again, you get too close
• 37:56
  to these things, right. And certainly like the way would
• 37:59
  work with us was like we'd ideate in January.
• 38:02
  So you come back from Christmas, you would spend a month in the
• 38:05
  office throwing ideas. So you'd like, you'd be like, I
• 38:09
  was, I was the sort of the of the three of the producers that
• 38:12
  I worked with, I was at the car one.
• 38:14
  I did the car stuff, real sort of like, you know, supercar
• 38:17
  stuff. And then my friend Tom was doing
• 38:21
  this sort of really crazy adventure stuff.
• 38:23
  He would always do the specials and all the kind of like really
• 38:26
  scary, like Namibia and all that kind of stuff.
• 38:28
  And then our friend Pete did all the builds and all the kind of
• 38:31
  like slightly techie stuff and all the engineering and
• 38:34
  whatever. So, yeah, so we'd spend our
• 38:37
  first month of the year throwing those ideas, you know, just
• 38:39
  getting, you know, finding new stories, finding new cars that
• 38:43
  have been announced, whatever, finding locations, finding towns
• 38:46
  with silly names and kind of just putting them all there in
• 38:48
  front of the boys in this big lovely brainstorm and kind of
• 38:51
  saying, what can we do with this?
• 38:53
  You know, there are all these towns in Germany with very rude
• 38:56
  names. You know, that was like, that
• 38:59
  was the kind of what we would do.
• 39:00
  Well, through January, you'd sort of start planning stuff in
• 39:03
  Feb and then basically like March through or September,
• 39:07
  October you'd be filming, you know, they're always, the boys
• 39:09
  would just be gone constantly, you know, and, and you'd be
• 39:12
  filming and then we'd do the, the, the studio in the in the
• 39:15
  back end of the year. So it was like, it was just
• 39:18
  relentless. It really was, you know, and I
• 39:21
  think, again, thank God I was young because I had the stuff to
• 39:25
  deal. With But when you go back and
• 39:26
  you watch that first episode, you get chills like the rest of
• 39:29
  us. Big time and again, because I
• 39:32
  had sort of thank you for bringing me back on point
• 39:34
  because, yeah, I got too close to it.
• 39:35
  And I was sort of like by the end of my run, I was like, oh
• 39:38
  God, enough of this, please. But yeah, being able to go back
• 39:41
  and rewatch it and certainly rewatch the those first few
• 39:45
  episodes where we were so heavily sort of handicapped in
• 39:52
  in what we were doing. We, you know, we didn't have,
• 39:54
  this is going to sound like sort of, you know, unjust moaning,
• 39:58
  but like we didn't have things like company credit cards.
• 40:00
  We didn't have, like we didn't have an account established yet
• 40:04
  with, with the company that we would rent our Land Rovers for.
• 40:09
  Yeah. So it was like you were just
• 40:10
  like. Just everything was, was a
• 40:13
  stress, like everything was unjustly stressful.
• 40:15
  Like, you know, oh, we're going to France next week to buy 3
• 40:18
  Maserati, buy turbos. How am I going to pay for them?
• 40:22
  You know, I'll, I'll, you know, the production manager put 40
• 40:27
  grand in my personal account to go buy these, you know, so that
• 40:29
  someone could go buy the cars. And you're like, well, this is
• 40:31
  like this is, this is weird. This is not making TV.
• 40:34
  This is like running around with a with, you know, a lot of cash
• 40:38
  and yeah. In in retrospect, don't you
• 40:40
  think that was part of the, the recipe of the magic or for the
• 40:43
  magic? I mean, that was, you know, that
• 40:45
  that you were doing it on the fly, that you were sort of, I
• 40:49
  don't know, kind of freestyling, I guess for lack of a better.
• 40:52
  I think so. I think so.
• 40:54
  I think the boys found a bit of creativity in it as well.
• 40:57
  I think again, to go back to Andy Willman's book, he sort of
• 41:01
  talks about the ebb and flow of Top Gear.
• 41:03
  You know, there were those first couple of seasons where they
• 41:05
  were still figuring it out. There's 234 and you know, there
• 41:09
  was a change in personnel with Jason Doors moving out and you
• 41:12
  know, James coming in and stuff like that.
• 41:14
  And then they were just kind of still trying to do consumer
• 41:16
  stuff. But there was obviously the Top
• 41:18
  Gear, you know, that sort of Tinder with Tinder was sort of
• 41:21
  lit. Then they've sort of had that
• 41:24
  epic sort of meteoric rise, you know, that rounded them out
• 41:28
  maybe 2000 and twelve, 2013. But then he says that like the
• 41:31
  next few years, up until basically up until they got
• 41:34
  cancelled, you know, everything started to get a bit fraught.
• 41:38
  Everything started to stagnate slightly.
• 41:40
  They'd maybe done all the good ideas.
• 41:42
  They were sort of starting to recycle a few bits.
• 41:44
  I mean, they still made amazing stuff.
• 41:46
  And like, as a viewer, and I'm so glad that I get to just be a
• 41:48
  viewer of all that awesome Top Gear stuff.
• 41:52
  It's still, to me, Reed's is fantastic.
• 41:54
  It's like flawless. But for him and for the boys, I
• 41:57
  think there was like a slight stagnation and a slight sort of
• 42:01
  like creative lull. And I think they refound that
• 42:04
  with the Grand Tour. I think, you know, between the
• 42:07
  change in employers, the change, the slight change in format, you
• 42:10
  know, the D restrictions. And I think to your point, even
• 42:12
  though, you know, it's not punk because we had millions of
• 42:16
  pounds, but like, it was quite DIY.
• 42:18
  It was quite punk there. No.
• 42:20
  And yeah, I think that was, I think that was really cool.
• 42:24
  And again, they still, you know, being the pros they are, they
• 42:26
  still sort of whittled away and refined it.
• 42:29
  And you find by season 2, I think the boys are really on
• 42:32
  full song. All the video, all the films are
• 42:34
  also in the studios are really tight, like, and yeah, being
• 42:37
  able to rewatch it and and go back is, is a real privilege,
• 42:40
  real honor. You'll always have that on your
• 42:44
  shelf, right? This amazing thing?
• 42:48
  It's a door opener and, and I'm sort of like, I'm quite
• 42:51
  cautious. It's funny.
• 42:52
  I, I say this knowing that we've been talking about it for the
• 42:54
  last half an hour or whatever, but like I'm quite cautious to
• 42:56
  try not to talk about it too much because because it meant so
• 42:59
  much to me and because it meant so much to a, you know, pretty
• 43:02
  much everyone. I I that with, you know,
• 43:04
  recreationally or all work wise, because we're all car people and
• 43:07
  we all love that blem and show and we love those three boys.
• 43:10
  I don't want to sound like a like a you know, yeah, one track
• 43:14
  pony or whatever, but it is the perpetual door opener.
• 43:18
  It is the thing for me and for my career that, you know, has
• 43:21
  kept on giving like it's it's unbelievable.
• 43:23
  You know, I mean, the fact that I live and work in America is in
• 43:26
  no small part down to the fact that I worked on the Grand Tour,
• 43:30
  you know, and the fact that I got to go and and, you know,
• 43:33
  work at most trend and sort of get this lovely sort of second
• 43:37
  life as a card journalist. Again, something that I never
• 43:40
  thought, you know, between my background and just between the
• 43:43
  fact that I'd sort of picked my career path as ATV guy, you
• 43:47
  know, I didn't think I'd get to go and do journalism, But but,
• 43:50
  you know, through a combination of factors, not least the fact
• 43:52
  that I'd sort of done that show. I you know, I got I got a little
• 43:57
  helping hand and, and, and got to try that out and and, you
• 44:00
  know, stretch that muscle. So yeah, it's, it's, I'm so
• 44:04
  thankful and appreciative and I feel I'm, I haven't seen the
• 44:07
  guy. I saw them and I saw Andy like
• 44:09
  maybe two years ago. We all had a big wrap party when
• 44:12
  the show sort of formally ended. I was obviously long gone.
• 44:15
  And I was quite touched to give an invite actually, because I'd
• 44:17
  since moved away and, you know, I hadn't worked.
• 44:20
  I finished with them in 2018 and this was 2023 or 4 that we had
• 44:25
  the party. I remember when they finished,
• 44:26
  but I got an invite and I was, I was thrilled to go and to see
• 44:29
  everyone. And there was a real
• 44:31
  celebratory, you know, sense in the air.
• 44:33
  Everyone was just sort of happy, I think, that it was over.
• 44:37
  For. The guys that were still working
• 44:38
  on it. And not work, you know I mean.
• 44:42
  Yes, but but quite a legacy that they've.
• 44:45
  Got are there any legacy's the word?
• 44:47
  Yeah. Are there any segments or
• 44:49
  episodes that you were like most proud of from that time?
• 44:52
  Well, yeah, I would. It's funny.
• 44:54
  It would. It's kind of it's probably not
• 44:57
  the ones that that if you looked at the list of films that we did
• 45:01
  that I did, you know, or, or even, you know, more
• 45:03
  specifically the stuff that I like really, because because you
• 45:06
  know, it's, it's an office where you're all sharing ideas, you're
• 45:08
  all dipping into each other's films and helping out.
• 45:11
  You know, even if you don't go on every film, you've definitely
• 45:14
  helped on every film. So you feel a sense of ownership
• 45:17
  over all of it, a sense of pride around all of it.
• 45:19
  But there are ones that were yours, you know, whether that
• 45:22
  because you actually went or because you went and you had
• 45:24
  this idea and it got used or, you know, so, so from season 1,
• 45:30
  the Grand Tour, the Grand Tour, the one where we went to Italy
• 45:33
  and and pratted around in ADB 11 and we got Richard a Hellcat
• 45:39
  charger. Hellcat, I think was it a
• 45:41
  charger? And that was that was amazing.
• 45:44
  And I still, I mean, I don't know, I don't think Andy's going
• 45:48
  to listen to this. I think I came up with the name
• 45:50
  The Grand Tour, but I never got credit for it because I came up
• 45:52
  with that film and I was like, all right, you know, I sort of
• 45:55
  said, hey, we should go to Italy in Supercars and do this and
• 45:58
  that and look, and there was actually this sort of like kind
• 46:02
  of like the Route 66 or the North Coast 500 that we have in,
• 46:06
  in England or England. No, in the United Kingdom.
• 46:10
  Sorry to all. Muscles, I believe you'll find.
• 46:12
  Oh. Gee, it's cancelled.
• 46:16
  There's the thing in Italy called the Grand Tour.
• 46:19
  It's this beautiful route of, of roads that sort of goes right up
• 46:23
  the spine of the country. And I, I'd sort of put that
• 46:25
  under their noses. And then like 3 or 4 weeks
• 46:27
  later, the white smoke rose from Jeremy's office and, and he
• 46:31
  stood on the balcony and said, we're going to call the show the
• 46:33
  Grand Tour. And I was there like waiting for
• 46:35
  the waiting for the Marks and Spencer's gift card that never
• 46:38
  came. But but that one I love because
• 46:40
  it was yeah, because I I just feel a particular sense of
• 46:44
  ownership. It's not even the best film, but
• 46:45
  it was just such a good time. It was, you know, super cars in
• 46:48
  Italy. It felt like after the struggles
• 46:50
  that the early part of filming. And that was when I say
• 46:54
  struggles, I mean things like we did this, like we did this film
• 46:57
  that everyone hates. I didn't go on it, thank
• 47:00
  goodness. But but like, you know, when
• 47:04
  when something doesn't go quite as well as, as it should, it
• 47:07
  sort of permeates, right? And it's sort of like casts
• 47:09
  doubts and it and it, you know, just affects the office, infects
• 47:12
  the office, I should say. So, yeah, we did this film that
• 47:15
  was like a Tom Cruise live die, repeat style kind of thing.
• 47:20
  Like no one likes that film. And, you know, not that we knew
• 47:22
  it at the time, but like, you know, we'd done that.
• 47:24
  We'd done this film in Barbados, which I went, I went and did
• 47:28
  that where we sank a load of old cars to make some coral reefs.
• 47:33
  Like I didn't have any driving in it.
• 47:35
  I don't think anyone turned a wheel for a week and that was
• 47:38
  like a weird one and stuff like that.
• 47:40
  So then to go to Italy with, you know, Grand Tours and and prat
• 47:44
  around for a week, that was awesome.
• 47:47
  I've got a particular affinity for the mat, the yeah, the
• 47:50
  Maserati by turbo film that we shot in northern France because
• 47:53
  it's cheap cars, because, you know, it was like, that was the
• 47:56
  first one that that we did. It was like that that really,
• 48:00
  you know, I like it was one of those shoots as well where it
• 48:02
  was just like cold and miserable for the entire week and
• 48:05
  everything went wrong and they were like at least two nights of
• 48:09
  of literal 0 sleep for the mechanics and and a couple of us
• 48:12
  producers because the cars were so bad, so bad, But then you
• 48:18
  they were. Bad new like.
• 48:19
  Let's just establish that. They were God, I know yes,
• 48:22
  right, but they're so tempting. You look at them and you're
• 48:24
  like, oh God, I saw it by Turbo in LA recently and I just
• 48:27
  thought, my goodness me, I'd look good driving now they've.
• 48:30
  They've kind of come into their own, you know, it's, yeah, I, I,
• 48:33
  I got to give you credit, just as someone who's worked in
• 48:35
  advertising and design and branding his whole life, The
• 48:38
  Grand Tour is a truly wonderful name.
• 48:40
  And the way that it dovetails off of Top Gear, the two
• 48:43
  syllables and everything else, It it's, it's, it's kind of,
• 48:48
  it's kind of wonderful. And I so if if you came up with
• 48:51
  that, well, I just all the more credit to you because this.
• 48:55
  Is firstly, thank you, I'm going to bank it.
• 48:58
  I'm going to put that in my pocket.
• 48:59
  That's safe, that's coming home with me.
• 49:01
  But I will say two things. Firstly, I think those thanks
• 49:04
  should probably be directed to some poor Italian tourist board
• 49:10
  creative because he definitely came up with it.
• 49:12
  I just saw it and happened to put it under someone's nose at
• 49:15
  the at the office. Well, it's.
• 49:17
  Not the it's not the inventors, it's the innovators.
• 49:19
  Well. Hey, that's right.
• 49:20
  I mean, success has many fathers, right?
• 49:22
  But failure is an orphan. So I think, you know, I don't
• 49:25
  want to claim I did just claim it.
• 49:27
  I claimed it. And again, I feel, I feel like
• 49:29
  the statute of limitations has gone on that I definitely didn't
• 49:33
  not come up with that I didn't not come up with it, but I also
• 49:36
  maybe didn't come up with it. So who knows, maybe I did.
• 49:39
  You'll have to find out and you'll never find out.
• 49:42
  Stop me from talking please before I get emails from Amazon.
• 49:46
  I declare it so. Yeah, I love it.
• 49:51
  I love it. No, really dare.
• 49:53
  Go ahead. Sorry, I was.
• 49:54
  Just going to say, so whilst there was so many highs, there
• 49:58
  were a couple of lows during the the seasons and in one in
• 50:03
  particular when you guys were in Switzerland and it was almost a
• 50:07
  near death experience and you were on that shoot.
• 50:11
  Yeah, I was. And that was, again, I don't
• 50:15
  know if I'm getting old or something, but it's something
• 50:16
  I've been thinking about more and it, well, I guess because I
• 50:18
  was reading Andy's book and he talks about it in there as well.
• 50:21
  But so that was my first, that was my first shoot as like a as
• 50:28
  like the like a fully fledged producer.
• 50:31
  So like year one, we were like junior producers.
• 50:33
  We always had someone with us who was like a hand holder who
• 50:37
  was like, you know, this one and and especially that section of
• 50:41
  this film, I was like, I was like, yeah.
• 50:45
  And it was like very scary for that to be happening on a shoot
• 50:49
  that you're. Well, I didn't control it.
• 50:51
  You know, we still had direct a director and we still had like
• 50:54
  lots of us, you know, at my level.
• 50:56
  But like still, it was like a pretty terrifying thing.
• 50:58
  And we had lobbied. It's not like we didn't have
• 51:02
  money, but by as we all know. But by season 2, Jeremy and the
• 51:08
  boys and Zoe who ran the money side of things had worked out
• 51:13
  that by spending big, they were spending their own money.
• 51:17
  You know, in that sort of roundabout way they were, they
• 51:19
  were eating into the bottom line that would eventually be a
• 51:21
  payout that they would all split, right.
• 51:24
  So whilst we were still spending big on Season 2, we had to
• 51:28
  justify stuff a little bit more than season 1 where the onus was
• 51:31
  like, we need a television show, go out and make it, oh, we need
• 51:34
  to helicopter everyone to this place.
• 51:35
  Great, Do it. Does it mean the shoot
• 51:37
  continues? Yes, do it.
• 51:39
  You know, Season 2 it was like a little bit more justification
• 51:42
  and we were doing a hill climb in Switzerland.
• 51:44
  Switzerland, which famously banned all forms of, you know,
• 51:48
  legitimate motor racing for several decades after that
• 51:52
  horrific crash in Le Mans in 55. And still to this day, I don't
• 51:56
  think really has any, any form of, you know, circuit stuff.
• 52:00
  There's just, there's just nothing going on there.
• 52:01
  Hill climbs they love, they've got lots of hills and they love
• 52:04
  rules. Therefore FIA sanctioned hill
• 52:06
  climbs they absolutely love. And this was an FIA sanctioned
• 52:10
  one. The guys that we were speaking
• 52:12
  to, the guys that I made contact with were like proper sanctioned
• 52:15
  FIA guys and whatever. And, and because of that, they
• 52:17
  really made us play by the rules in a way that I found as a
• 52:20
  producer really frustrating because I was like, what do you
• 52:22
  mean? Like, just let us just let us
• 52:24
  come and do the thing. And they're like, well, Jeremy
• 52:26
  hasn't got his hill climb license and you know on what
• 52:28
  none of them did, you know. And so because of that and lots
• 52:32
  of hoops to jump through, we ended up running the boys in an
• 52:36
  exhibition class. So they weren't actually
• 52:38
  competing with, with all the many actual, you know, legit
• 52:43
  hill climbers that were there that day.
• 52:45
  They were going up like a bunch would go up, like a class of
• 52:49
  cars would go up for 20-30 minutes.
• 52:51
  Then there'd be like a road sweeper would go up and clear
• 52:55
  the track or whatever. And then the boys would do like
• 52:57
  these kind of parade laps. And we were told, and they were
• 52:59
  told not to push, like push for cameras, which is different to
• 53:02
  pushing for time, right. And, and so, yeah, they were,
• 53:06
  you know, that's what they were doing.
• 53:09
  But we had spoken with the event organisers beforehand about
• 53:14
  health and safety and they were like, yes, yes, there will be,
• 53:16
  you know, health and safety there.
• 53:18
  In England we have the St. John's Ambulance.
• 53:21
  I don't know what the, the American equivalent is, but
• 53:23
  they're sort of like a volunteer ambulance service.
• 53:25
  They go football games and like gives you like gives you like
• 53:29
  biscuits and aspirin if you if you break.
• 53:31
  Your leg, you know, get the vapors, Yeah.
• 53:33
  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it was like a
• 53:35
  pretty low key medical footprint, let's say at this
• 53:41
  place. And we had lobbied them to, to
• 53:43
  have more people and they said no because, you know, why would
• 53:46
  they pay for something we wanted?
• 53:48
  Whatever. So, so we'd gone back and asked
• 53:51
  Andy and the guys if we could sort of put the local, wasn't
• 53:56
  that local, but the local air ambulance on standby.
• 53:58
  And now they weren't going to be on standby because I don't know
• 54:03
  if it was because it was offseason, like because it
• 54:04
  wasn't ski season. So they weren't, or maybe it was
• 54:06
  like a seat, like, I don't know, just like that, just that day.
• 54:09
  It just happened to be that day or something.
• 54:10
  But they weren't going to be the like the ambulance helicopter
• 54:14
  men weren't going to be where the ambulance helicopter thing
• 54:17
  was. And I want we wanted that there.
• 54:19
  So we paid like a lot of money to to have them on standby,
• 54:23
  hoping we'd never need them. And of course, like we always,
• 54:26
  you know, get you've always got a couple of guys, a couple of
• 54:30
  trained firefighters, Jaws of Life, you know, medical
• 54:33
  apparatus. You always have that on a big,
• 54:35
  on a big car show, you know, and you hope you never need them and
• 54:40
  you never do. And every time that you're
• 54:43
  totting up the totals of your shoots after the fact, you go,
• 54:45
  yeah. And we spent 4 grand on those
• 54:47
  guys. You know, that's the money we're
• 54:49
  never getting back. But you know, the day you need
• 54:51
  them, thank goodness that they're there.
• 54:53
  And in this case where we'd paid extra to have this, this air
• 54:56
  ambulance like put on standby or whatever.
• 54:58
  And it got Richard out. They got Richard off the ground
• 55:01
  within about 6 or 7 minutes, I think they were on the ground
• 55:03
  and they got him up pretty amazing.
• 55:06
  But yeah, the crash was horrible.
• 55:08
  I was. So they, the boys would go up
• 55:11
  123 staggered 20s, fifteen, 20 seconds in between them and what
• 55:15
  we were doing because it was like a obviously it's with a
• 55:18
  bit, with a being a hill climb. It was a one way system, one way
• 55:20
  hill from start to finish. And then you'd have to like
• 55:24
  meander your way around like around the backside of the
• 55:27
  mountain via like two or three little villages to get back to
• 55:30
  the start point. It was a bit of a faff.
• 55:32
  And So what we've been doing all day was the boys go up.
• 55:35
  I was following behind them in like a pace car kind of thing.
• 55:39
  I would once we got up to the top, they'd be pulled over in a
• 55:42
  in a lay by and a pull out there.
• 55:44
  I would go past them and then I would I had flashing lights and
• 55:47
  I would like lead them back to the start line and it worked
• 55:50
  flute like perfectly. Five times the boys had done 5-4
• 55:54
  or five good runs and and we got them, you know, kept them away
• 55:59
  from the baying crowds and all this kind of stuff because it
• 56:01
  was, you know, crowd control was like a big deal.
• 56:03
  They were just so busy whenever there were people around.
• 56:08
  And then, yeah, we decided to do one more.
• 56:11
  And of course, that was the one where where, you know, I'm like,
• 56:14
  trundling up, probably had my arm out of the window of this
• 56:18
  thing. You know, one more last run.
• 56:20
  And then we're all going back to the hotel kind of thing.
• 56:21
  And then over the radio comes someone said, you know, car off
• 56:26
  the course, big crash, big crash.
• 56:28
  And the thing that scared me the most, I don't know if I've ever
• 56:32
  really told me on this, but so Jeremy was driving the
• 56:37
  Aventador. Yeah, I think it was an SVJ, was
• 56:39
  it? I can't remember.
• 56:40
  I think it was. And he's a big, he's a big
• 56:43
  bloke, tall. And the, the FIA stewards had
• 56:50
  obviously mandated that everyone wears a helmet.
• 56:53
  And so when Jeremy had put his helmet on and tried to get in
• 56:56
  the car, this is on the morning of the the scene, the morning of
• 56:59
  the race, mind you, he just couldn't do it.
• 57:01
  He was his, you know, he was fully, you know, neck at 45°,
• 57:08
  which presented a big problem. And again, and we've not really
• 57:12
  touched on this, but just his his problem solving and not just
• 57:17
  like evasive manoeuvres problem solving, but his like problem
• 57:20
  solving that always seems to benefit the film, make the film
• 57:23
  better him into play. And he, we had this like very,
• 57:28
  very sweet, very young driver with us from Lamborghini.
• 57:35
  He was just there as a bit of a minder of the car.
• 57:37
  He was, he was like a some, he was in the Lamborghini drivers
• 57:40
  program at some state, you know, at some level he was obviously a
• 57:43
  damn good driver, but he was just there and all week really,
• 57:46
  he'd been with us. He'd just been sort of filling
• 57:48
  the car up with gas and all that kind of stuff.
• 57:50
  And Jeremy said, I don't know what his name actually was, but
• 57:54
  I think Jeremy gave him some like, you know, regressive
• 57:57
  Italian, you know, name. Hey, Paolo, come over here or
• 57:59
  whatever. And was like, you're going to
• 58:01
  drive for me, right. You're going to drive for me.
• 58:04
  And that's where the beat came. Where?
• 58:06
  Where? Yeah.
• 58:07
  Jeremy had like, you know, put this little Lamborghini driver
• 58:11
  in. Yeah, put it in.
• 58:13
  And, and, and and therefore Jeremy's lap times were great or
• 58:15
  Jeremy's hill climb times were great.
• 58:17
  That was like the beat of the film, but for that final run.
• 58:20
  And I don't know why Jeremy, I think he just wanted to do it,
• 58:25
  just wanted his drives got in without a helmet.
• 58:29
  And again, I think this final run we would we were going even
• 58:33
  slower than before. So it was really like not a big
• 58:35
  deal other than for the pencil pushers in, you know, in the FAA
• 58:40
  or whatever. But so Jeremy went and got up
• 58:42
  without a helmet. So anyway, when this radio call
• 58:44
  comes through car off the track and Jeremy was had been the last
• 58:49
  one up. I I thought it was him and and
• 58:54
  and so I'm thinking, well, not only has he gone off the track,
• 58:58
  but he's not wearing a helmet And that really I remember like
• 59:01
  again, I've been sort of quite fortunate up until then.
• 59:03
  I'd like not dealt with, you know, a big accident, work or
• 59:07
  otherwise, you know, would not, not, not hadn't lost anyone or
• 59:11
  had any sort of, you know, scary moments in life or whatever
• 59:14
  really. And all of a sudden it was like,
• 59:17
  oh, bloody hell. This is a big real moment that's
• 59:19
  about and I'm sort of racing up this hill.
• 59:21
  Of a sudden, my, you know, my pace has changed from like
• 59:23
  ambling up, listening to like, whatever crap Swiss radio
• 59:27
  station I was listening to get up this hill.
• 59:30
  And I got up there and thank goodness the Lamborghini was
• 59:33
  there on the hill. It wasn't Jeremy that had
• 59:36
  crashed. And I looked down and there's
• 59:39
  just the black. The Rimac was like white and
• 59:41
  blue. And I just saw the black, the
• 59:44
  carbon fiber underside of the Rimac about 300 feet away and
• 59:49
  like 200 feet down. It was like a really steep
• 59:52
  slope. It was really not, not what you
• 59:55
  want to see. So problem one was this.
• 1:00:01
  Jeremy had pulled the lamp the the events door over right there
• 1:00:05
  where he'd seen that Richard had gone off ahead of him, right.
• 1:00:09
  He'd gone out and had his mobile phone out and it'd started
• 1:00:12
  filming. And as which, which you can say,
• 1:00:18
  you can say that's heartless or, or you can say whatever you want
• 1:00:21
  about that, But it's fair to say we didn't have any cameras
• 1:00:24
  there. Like we, you know, maybe on the,
• 1:00:26
  the, the finish point, for some reason, that's where Richard had
• 1:00:29
  chosen to have a crash where there was no cameras to cover
• 1:00:32
  it. We had to pay, we had to pay
• 1:00:33
  some Swiss dude like many 10s of thousands of euros to, to get
• 1:00:37
  licenses. YouTube footage for the films,
• 1:00:40
  The footage you see of the car going off the road is like some
• 1:00:45
  fellow with a handycam who's now 30 grand rich or whatever.
• 1:00:49
  So Jeremy had taken his phone out and had like started or or
• 1:00:53
  gestured towards starting filming, at which point a
• 1:00:56
  Marshall, really stocky Marshall had come over.
• 1:00:59
  Jeremy, quite rightly probably especially not being sort of
• 1:01:03
  aware of the situation. None of us were aware of the
• 1:01:06
  situation, but you know what I mean, Aware of the interplay and
• 1:01:08
  who Jeremy was to Richard or whatever.
• 1:01:10
  This guy had sort of started saying no, no photos, no, no, no
• 1:01:15
  to Jeremy and was like in his face and was like pushing him.
• 1:01:19
  And Jeremy was kind of like, you know, holding him off because
• 1:01:22
  there was like quite a size disparity.
• 1:01:23
  But like, and he was had his phone here and he was sort of
• 1:01:26
  holding him off. But I could see that that was
• 1:01:28
  like weirdly in my mind, that was remember 1 because because
• 1:01:32
  it was 10 feet away from me rather than 300 feet and I could
• 1:01:36
  quickly deal with that. So I sort of weirdly, and again,
• 1:01:39
  like it wasn't, and this was not my dynamic with Jeremy, but I
• 1:01:43
  just, you know, panic and everything.
• 1:01:45
  I just got between them and, and, and just like pushed this
• 1:01:48
  guy away and, and sort of like did the same kind as Jeremy and,
• 1:01:52
  and then sort of said to the the steward, I said, we've got to go
• 1:01:55
  help the driver. We've got to go down, obviously.
• 1:01:58
  And so I start like running down this hill and I do remember
• 1:02:03
  thinking I'm going to see my friends go like it was a really.
• 1:02:07
  And that's like, again, like you sort of things you'll never
• 1:02:09
  forget. And thank God it was it wasn't
• 1:02:11
  as bad as it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.
• 1:02:13
  But I do remember thinking, I'm going to see how am I going to
• 1:02:15
  see Richard, you know, you know, not looking good.
• 1:02:19
  And and yes, I'm running down. And what's interesting is the
• 1:02:27
  Rimac, which was an awesome car and I, I had to foster that
• 1:02:30
  relationship, like from finding in whatever car magazine, you
• 1:02:34
  know, Auto Express or whatever, from finding that like it is a
• 1:02:38
  new car in Croatia and it was 120 horsepower, 1200 horsepower,
• 1:02:43
  whatever from that and putting it under the boy's noses and
• 1:02:46
  them going, that's not real, that's never going to exist.
• 1:02:49
  There have been many cars that look like that and many cars
• 1:02:52
  from companies, you know, of that scale.
• 1:02:54
  It doesn't listen, it never will.
• 1:02:56
  So from that to getting in touch with wonderful Martyr, if if
• 1:03:01
  anyone knows Marta at the head of PR at Rimac and now obviously
• 1:03:05
  Bugatti like getting in touch with her and she's like, yes,
• 1:03:07
  it's real, you know, and, and, and they were trepidatious.
• 1:03:11
  They'd only built like 7 or 8 cars of that concept 1.
• 1:03:14
  And so they as much as they recognized that it was like a
• 1:03:16
  big deal to get the car on the show.
• 1:03:19
  They didn't have any cars to give us.
• 1:03:20
  They had to get one of the early investors, you know, personal
• 1:03:24
  car and give it to us and and that had relied on me and
• 1:03:28
  Richard flying to Croatia to meet them and take a factory
• 1:03:31
  tour, which was when they asked for that.
• 1:03:34
  I was like, that's never going to happen because he's just too
• 1:03:36
  busy, you know, not that he doesn't want it, but like, where
• 1:03:39
  am I going to find two days to fly him in for a meeting for a
• 1:03:43
  car that we might not even get, you know, anyway, I'd fostered
• 1:03:46
  this relationship. I love this car, I love this
• 1:03:49
  company, whatever. And now I'm seeing it like on
• 1:03:51
  its on its roof, you know, and, and, and, but what's interesting
• 1:03:54
  was it had little and again, like it's only 10 years ago, but
• 1:04:00
  but still, if you know, things have come on so far that like
• 1:04:03
  some of the things that were in the room, even just the fact
• 1:04:05
  that it was an electric car was pretty nuts.
• 1:04:07
  So back then. But like it had buttons for door
• 1:04:11
  handles and we'd been talking about them all week and about
• 1:04:15
  how do we like them? Do we not like them?
• 1:04:18
  You know, all the crew had different opinions and one of
• 1:04:21
  our pro drivers, one of our professional drivers that would
• 1:04:24
  come with us on shoots and would help us like basically once the
• 1:04:28
  guys had like finished the road trip, we would sometimes do the
• 1:04:31
  road trip again in reverse to get just get more shots, just
• 1:04:34
  get boring shots of like the cars on a highway, you know,
• 1:04:37
  stuff like that. The boys aren't going to sit and
• 1:04:38
  do that. So we do it for them kind of
• 1:04:40
  thing with these pro drivers and one of the wonderful pro drivers
• 1:04:45
  ago called Maro Maro Callo, who has since had an amazing career
• 1:04:49
  as a stunt driver in all the Mission Impossible films and a
• 1:04:53
  lot of the fast films and Gran Turismo and F1 and stuff.
• 1:04:56
  He's he's the madman that took a, an R35 Skyline and turned it
• 1:05:01
  into a camera car. So it's like the world's
• 1:05:04
  fastest. It's like the world's fastest.
• 1:05:06
  And, and therefore he's a busy boy now.
• 1:05:07
  But he had, I guess, been talking with one of the Rimac
• 1:05:14
  representatives and about these door handles and that Rimac
• 1:05:17
  person had mentioned tomorrow, yes, but in the event of a
• 1:05:21
  crash, there is a manual release for them.
• 1:05:23
  It's down here by the seat. And you'd shown Morrow, and
• 1:05:26
  Morrow had then not for any reason other than sort of
• 1:05:29
  anecdotally had then shown Richard.
• 1:05:31
  And then that afternoon, Richard had to use that.
• 1:05:34
  And we're very thankful that we did because that car, when I was
• 1:05:36
  running down to it, was on fire. Like it was.
• 1:05:39
  There were little smoke and a little sort of weird green
• 1:05:42
  flashes of flame. And yeah, it was horrible.
• 1:05:45
  And Richard sort of dragged and dropped himself down, dragged
• 1:05:48
  himself out. His knee was busted.
• 1:05:49
  The first thing he said to me was like, well, he said two
• 1:05:52
  things. He said, where's my Rolex?
• 1:05:54
  Because his Rolex had flown off in the in the in the crash.
• 1:05:57
  And then he was like, call Mindy, call, call Mindy, which
• 1:06:02
  we did. And so he's laying there getting
• 1:06:04
  some first aid, the helicopter's landing.
• 1:06:05
  He's on the phone. My phone's on his chest.
• 1:06:07
  He's like, tell him, Mindy, it's going to be OK, whatever.
• 1:06:10
  All this, the cars like noxious fumes are coming from this
• 1:06:14
  thing. We're only like 2030 feet away
• 1:06:17
  from us. We're getting pretty stressed
• 1:06:19
  about that. And, and yeah, and then he gets
• 1:06:22
  airlifted. We as a we go down and collect
• 1:06:25
  all our crew and sort of, you know, exfiltrate out.
• 1:06:28
  And we had a bunch of like Land Rovers and yeah, we're piling
• 1:06:33
  all the crew into these Land Rovers so that we can get off
• 1:06:35
  the hill and get back down to base and regroup.
• 1:06:39
  And no matter which way we try with these three Land Rovers and
• 1:06:44
  this, you know, probably like 16 of us or whatever, we just can't
• 1:06:47
  get everyone in. And so I say we could just about
• 1:06:50
  get 15 in, but we couldn't get 16 people in.
• 1:06:52
  So I said go down, someone come back for me.
• 1:06:56
  And the second that that the the split rear tailgate on that
• 1:07:00
  third of those 3 Land Rovers shut.
• 1:07:04
  And I was alone essentially on this on this hill.
• 1:07:06
  I turned around and just burst into tears.
• 1:07:09
  Like it was just the emotion. It was so it was like such a
• 1:07:12
  weird thing, like such a wave of like, fear.
• 1:07:16
  And I hadn't been scared into that point.
• 1:07:18
  But then I was like, you know, very scared.
• 1:07:19
  And yeah, it was a real stress. But hey, it was good TV, guys.
• 1:07:25
  And that's really the end of the day.
• 1:07:27
  All that matters, is it not? Moral of the story, it was good
• 1:07:31
  TV. Love it.
• 1:07:34
  Yeah, Yeah, what an amazing. You're a young guy and the fact
• 1:07:41
  that you've had all these amazing adventures is is, you
• 1:07:44
  know, so many people just never, ever even get a a taste of that.
• 1:07:49
  It's heavy, you know, it's yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah.
• 1:07:53
  What was the attraction moving to the US?
• 1:07:57
  The US? That's a funny one.
• 1:07:59
  Again, I'm doing the dream thing right.
• 1:08:02
  I'm working on the Grand Tour. And it really had been, you
• 1:08:05
  know, was the dream top year was the dream that became Top Grand
• 1:08:07
  Tour and that was the dream. And then we were doing it and it
• 1:08:09
  was exciting. But still you find yourself sat
• 1:08:13
  in a really quite crappy office at like 4:00 PM on a Tuesday in
• 1:08:20
  February and it's been raining since October.
• 1:08:23
  And you're in, you're in West London and you open up Instagram
• 1:08:27
  and you see sun soaked, you know, scenes of, of, of, you
• 1:08:33
  know, 250 Californians driving up and down, you know, the snake
• 1:08:38
  and stuff. And it just firstly, it appealed
• 1:08:41
  from a visual sense and from a change.
• 1:08:44
  I think I've, I don't like to stay still for too long.
• 1:08:46
  So, so, you know, even as we got into that third season, I kind
• 1:08:49
  of knew that I was kind of moving on at some point.
• 1:08:52
  And and then it appealed. It appeared because it looked
• 1:08:55
  cool and because it was warm and all that kind of thing.
• 1:08:58
  But it also, you know, with that was 2018 and even by then, I
• 1:09:03
  think we all knew and especially with failed the failed Drive
• 1:09:09
  tribe experiment, the sort of version one of drive tribe, if
• 1:09:12
  anyone remembers that, like we all knew that the future was
• 1:09:16
  online and what we were online, right?
• 1:09:17
  We were, we were on a big streamer, but still we knew the
• 1:09:20
  future wasn't TV shows with a budget of £150 million or
• 1:09:26
  whatever we ended up having, it wasn't that much, but you know
• 1:09:30
  what I mean, Like megabucks money.
• 1:09:34
  And so, yeah, the, the, the sort of appeal was get to America,
• 1:09:40
  which sounds nice. And, and you know, and that's
• 1:09:43
  where seemingly in, in Los Angeles at that time with
• 1:09:45
  Petrolicious, with the early incantation of Doughnut and Ray,
• 1:09:51
  you know, I know I don't know if Ray service was right.
• 1:09:52
  But anyway, there was like a, a bunch of stuff going on.
• 1:09:54
  Jay was already doing his stuff. Like there was just, it just
• 1:09:57
  seemed that the world was moving online, the car content space
• 1:10:00
  was moving online. And I just kind of wanted to
• 1:10:03
  capture that. And, and so, yeah, I managed to
• 1:10:05
  get a job with petrol issues, which was awesome.
• 1:10:09
  Again, I think like you couldn't have asked for a more different
• 1:10:13
  experience to go from big budget, big car show to, you
• 1:10:17
  know, two kids running around with with a couple of cameras
• 1:10:20
  and turning out films for like a grand 1500 bucks.
• 1:10:23
  But when you talk to people in our community, a lot of them
• 1:10:29
  petrol issues will be one of the first things they say when they
• 1:10:31
  talk about, you know, content that they love.
• 1:10:34
  And petrol issues has obviously been through its own ebb and
• 1:10:36
  flow and is obviously now back and doing amazing things.
• 1:10:39
  But there were three or four years there where it wasn't
• 1:10:40
  doing anything. And, and people still, you know,
• 1:10:42
  hold it in high regard and and and so, yeah, coming and doing
• 1:10:46
  that. And I, you know, I don't want to
• 1:10:47
  sort of say I was like a forecaster and it was 2018.
• 1:10:51
  Instagram was already, you know, whatever, 10 years old at that
• 1:10:54
  point. People, it was obvious that was
• 1:10:55
  happening. I just knew that there would be
• 1:10:58
  nothing that would be Top Gear Grand Tour for me, you know, in
• 1:11:02
  England. And from like a budgetary
• 1:11:04
  standpoint, not that it's all about the money, but money
• 1:11:07
  allows you to do things. And F1 will be the only other
• 1:11:10
  thing. And with the budget caps, F1 is
• 1:11:13
  just like it's, you know, it just doesn't, doesn't really
• 1:11:16
  allow for that kind of creativity.
• 1:11:19
  So, yeah, it sort of became move to America, get in with petrol
• 1:11:22
  issues and then and then see what happens.
• 1:11:24
  And then, and then, yeah, I've sort of been out, been out there
• 1:11:27
  for 7-7 or eight years now. And, and I, I'm very happy to
• 1:11:31
  say it's, you know, it is, it is what I thought it was it, you
• 1:11:35
  know, I hate to be, I do hate to be one of these sort of like LA
• 1:11:41
  idiots that sort of thinks the world begins and ends in the car
• 1:11:44
  culture begins and ends with. But my God, there's a lot of
• 1:11:49
  cool cars and a lot of great car people out there.
• 1:11:52
  And I'm not saying that there aren't everywhere else.
• 1:11:54
  In fact, you know, the, the new project I'm working on with Cars
• 1:11:58
  and Bids, which is a channel called Key about car culture.
• 1:12:04
  We're doing a series about the car culture in basically
• 1:12:08
  everywhere that's not Los Angeles.
• 1:12:09
  You know, we're doing, we're making a point of going to
• 1:12:13
  different cities, Seattle and New York and, you know,
• 1:12:17
  Vancouver and places like this and, and, and getting into the
• 1:12:21
  thick of like where, what's the car culture like there?
• 1:12:23
  Because we know it's there. It's just not as shouted about,
• 1:12:27
  you know, for better and for worse.
• 1:12:29
  So yeah, LA, a lot of fun. America awesome.
• 1:12:33
  Car's good. TV good.
• 1:12:34
  Crash is bad. That's great.
• 1:12:37
  I don't know. What makes great car content,
• 1:12:41
  though? You've you've worked with all
• 1:12:42
  these platforms, but I feel like everything you've touched is
• 1:12:44
  sort of turned to gold or was gold, you know, when you got
• 1:12:47
  there, whatever. But they they've all been these
• 1:12:48
  wonderful avenues. What is it that makes good car
• 1:12:50
  content, whether it's a big budget or small budget?
• 1:12:54
  It's gosh, it's authenticity and it's creativity, right?
• 1:12:59
  It's like, and it's tough because I think we're all we've
• 1:13:03
  all been so sort of, I don't know, not brainwashed, but like
• 1:13:10
  top again, to come back to it Top Gear.
• 1:13:12
  It's kind of like the, you know, the, the, the, the nebulous of,
• 1:13:16
  of so much of this stuff. And like, and again, like if you
• 1:13:21
  chart that rise, you know, when most people got into it and
• 1:13:24
  where most people sort of have their main love of the show and
• 1:13:27
  have the most reverie about the episodes is like in those in
• 1:13:30
  that sort of second-half of the BBC era where the money started
• 1:13:34
  getting spent and and everything started getting a bit more
• 1:13:36
  outlandish and a bit more crazy. And they do those like they were
• 1:13:40
  great films, but like, you know, they do those, those like films
• 1:13:43
  where they'd like review very practical cars, but in very
• 1:13:46
  impractical ways where they'd like, they'd end up like
• 1:13:48
  storming a beach in a Ford, Ford Fiesta or whatever it was, you
• 1:13:53
  know, just like, so it's really tricky because you get sort of
• 1:13:56
  conditioned into going OK, to make good content.
• 1:13:59
  It needs to have this like weird, subversive, you know,
• 1:14:02
  narrative or whatever. But like, no, like, and this is
• 1:14:05
  something we're finding out with this this new project with with
• 1:14:07
  Ryan and I is like, it's just authenticity.
• 1:14:10
  It's just, you know, we've kind of come full circle I feel like,
• 1:14:13
  and obviously I've got a propensity to think in those
• 1:14:15
  kinds of Top Gear grounds or terms, but we've come full
• 1:14:19
  circle and kind of gone well, it's just got to be about two
• 1:14:22
  mates having fun with cars. You know, like we are very lucky
• 1:14:27
  that we get to do this and we're going to bring you along for the
• 1:14:29
  ride. So I think that's it.
• 1:14:31
  And then I think beyond that, I think it's just creativity, but
• 1:14:34
  unburdened creativity because again, I think we all get bogged
• 1:14:37
  down in like, it's got to be shot on a cinema camera.
• 1:14:40
  We need a camera car, We need this, we need that.
• 1:14:43
  But no, like it can be shot on an iPhone.
• 1:14:45
  And if it's good, Demira being a beautiful example of that, you
• 1:14:49
  know, Mr. Handycam will endure and you know, Nope, stuff will
• 1:14:55
  be there, you know, being watched and enjoyed years after,
• 1:15:01
  you know, all of the sort of like cinematic stuff has kind of
• 1:15:05
  fallen away because it will look dated and old, whereas Doug's
• 1:15:08
  stuff is timeless, you know, because it's creative and it's
• 1:15:12
  authentic. So I think for me, that's what
• 1:15:14
  it is. And it's such a such a wishy
• 1:15:16
  washy answer because how do you sell creative and authentic to a
• 1:15:21
  channel? It's very hard to, but I think
• 1:15:23
  those are the things that shine through.
• 1:15:24
  You go to sell what you can sell, but then those are the two
• 1:15:26
  things you've got to get in there, you know?
• 1:15:29
  But that's the perfect answer, because those are two things you
• 1:15:31
  can't fake very. Good point.
• 1:15:34
  Yeah, believe me, I've tried. So you've been on your travels
• 1:15:40
  with key, which is a it's the creative side of cousin bids.
• 1:15:44
  Is that how we describe it? What was the best way to?
• 1:15:47
  Yeah, I so Cars and bids auction channel.
• 1:15:51
  Auction site obviously for, for enthusiasts cars founded by Doug
• 1:15:55
  Demuro 5-6 years ago, took on some, some extra funding and,
• 1:16:01
  and you know, have a great partner now with this this
• 1:16:04
  capsule fund and, and they really bolstered it built out
• 1:16:08
  the business and obviously built out the content side too.
• 1:16:10
  So Doug started doing a podcast the this car pod, which is
• 1:16:14
  awesome. You know, it's not not a patch
• 1:16:17
  on this, but it's pretty good and and somewhere.
• 1:16:22
  We're striving to get to, so that's right.
• 1:16:24
  I think it's fun, and that's important too.
• 1:16:28
  That's right, that's right. Yeah, again, right.
• 1:16:32
  But yeah, the the desire is there or was there from cars and
• 1:16:36
  bids from the management there for a sister channel which could
• 1:16:42
  go a little bit deeper into car culture and the people behind
• 1:16:47
  the cars. Because I think, you know, we
• 1:16:49
  all love Doug and we all love Kenan and Filippo and Nick and
• 1:16:52
  and those guys that make that podcast and we all love their
• 1:16:55
  sort of laser focused like nerd telepathy about cars.
• 1:17:00
  You know, it's like insane to and they're not just like that
• 1:17:03
  for the pod. They just aren't.
• 1:17:06
  It's incredible. And it's, it's, it's a level of
• 1:17:08
  knowledge that that, you know, like most, most, most, you know,
• 1:17:11
  encyclopedias don't possess. But like, I think the desire was
• 1:17:16
  there for content that, yeah, can go a little bit deeper, not
• 1:17:21
  into like, you know, the different trim levels of the,
• 1:17:25
  you know, whatever Chrysler Neon or whatever, but that can sort
• 1:17:30
  of like dive into culture, dive into stories and questions and
• 1:17:33
  conversations. You know, we've got we've got
• 1:17:35
  big plans. We've only just launched the
• 1:17:37
  channel. So it's like, it's such a big
• 1:17:39
  build up for like 1 YouTube video, which is all that's on
• 1:17:42
  there at the moment, but it's a good one.
• 1:17:43
  It is indeed. Really.
• 1:17:45
  Good one. Thank you, thank you.
• 1:17:46
  But but, you know, we have big plans to, to, to just offer
• 1:17:52
  people good again, authentic, honest, you know, creative car
• 1:17:57
  content. You know, we're doing it out of
• 1:17:59
  love. We, you know, we don't ask
• 1:18:00
  anything and, and no one does. You post stuff on YouTube,
• 1:18:03
  right? It's all free.
• 1:18:04
  Like we're so lucky that we have these, these, you know,
• 1:18:07
  incredible, you know, people, creatives making full time
• 1:18:10
  living out of giving us free content, you know, podcasts and
• 1:18:14
  everything. So yeah, we're just making cool
• 1:18:16
  car videos guys. And we'd love it if you would
• 1:18:18
  come and watch them because that lets us keep doing it.
• 1:18:21
  And hopefully you guys like it and, you know, it's the most
• 1:18:24
  sort of, you know, Route 1 stuff, but like, we just want to
• 1:18:28
  have fun in cars and we're very lucky that we get to do it.
• 1:18:31
  So yeah, that's that's what it's about.
• 1:18:33
  Basically. Episode 1 of of the OR not, I
• 1:18:37
  shouldn't say episode one, but the first film was was a great
• 1:18:39
  documentary from my colleague Ryan Lopez on sort of the hit a
• 1:18:45
  plotted history of JDM in America, like Japanese cars in
• 1:18:49
  America from the first ever car that was imported here, which
• 1:18:52
  was which was an amazing thing to be able to get some access to
• 1:18:57
  through. Yeah, the sort of 5055 years up
• 1:19:01
  until now sort of through drifting.
• 1:19:03
  And then the the role that a lot of TV shows and Initial D and
• 1:19:09
  Fast and Furious and that franchise kind of played in, in
• 1:19:12
  sort of taking these cars and, and, and sort of culturally
• 1:19:17
  appropriating them and making them, you know, making them
• 1:19:19
  something that kids and young people wanted to be into.
• 1:19:22
  So, yeah, it's a really good film.
• 1:19:23
  He talks to drifter and, you know, he's a Ryan's a cool guy.
• 1:19:27
  Ryan's Ryan knows people that I, you know, couldn't even hope to
• 1:19:32
  be in the same room as. So if you don't, if you don't
• 1:19:34
  watch key for anything else, watch it for Ryan's cool
• 1:19:36
  documentaries. They're they're very good.
• 1:19:39
  He's got another. Really.
• 1:19:39
  Impressed with the script on that one.
• 1:19:41
  I don't know if it was 100% Ryan or it was a collaborative
• 1:19:44
  effort, but yeah, I really enjoyed the script.
• 1:19:47
  Well, I'll say it again, Dan's success has many fathers.
• 1:19:52
  Very true. And are you going to claim the
• 1:19:55
  name key? Was that your idea?
• 1:19:57
  No, God no, because I hate that name.
• 1:20:04
  Producer. Producer Sean will kill me.
• 1:20:06
  Key was not my first choice name.
• 1:20:09
  And I may have turned the air blue with you guys when we spoke
• 1:20:13
  before we came on air about the name.
• 1:20:14
  Because for me, I don't know Key.
• 1:20:17
  I think it might be something to do with my accent and the fact
• 1:20:20
  that a lot of my family are from Liverpool.
• 1:20:22
  But to me the K sound is very harsh Key.
• 1:20:24
  Like it just doesn't roll off the tongue.
• 1:20:27
  It just, you know, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
• 1:20:31
  It just means it's an idea I don't like.
• 1:20:33
  And key for me as a name, I didn't love it.
• 1:20:36
  I'm learning to love it. Our branding is beautiful.
• 1:20:38
  I will say that we had a wonderful graphic designer come
• 1:20:41
  in and do some work for us. And Ryan really got us through
• 1:20:43
  there. And and yeah, it looks good.
• 1:20:47
  And I'm sure to everyone else and to You Beautiful Americans
• 1:20:50
  with your buttery smooth accents, it sounds awkward to
• 1:20:53
  me. I was saying hello and welcome
• 1:20:55
  to tea. Like it just like, it just sort
• 1:20:58
  of like shoots out of my mouth. I don't like it but it's a good
• 1:21:02
  channel. Guys please watch the videos.
• 1:21:05
  It is. It is.
• 1:21:05
  What? What have we got to come on that
• 1:21:07
  Channel? I know you were up seeing some
• 1:21:08
  friends of mine up in the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:21:10
  Can you talk about that yet or? Oh yeah, I think that will
• 1:21:13
  probably be out by the time this one comes out.
• 1:21:15
  Yeah. So.
• 1:21:15
  So you were a wonderful help with that.
• 1:21:17
  And as you always are. So yeah, we're episode 1 or CEO
• 1:21:21
  or the first. The first film was that lovely
• 1:21:23
  documentary about JDM culture. Yeah.
• 1:21:26
  The next thing we'll be releasing is the first of what
• 1:21:29
  will be an ongoing series that we're calling Arrive and Drive,
• 1:21:32
  which is where, as I mentioned, I go and sort of immerse myself
• 1:21:36
  in different areas of car culture in different cities.
• 1:21:39
  So we've shot Seattle. I'm currently out here shooting
• 1:21:42
  an episode in Manhattan in downtown New York.
• 1:21:46
  And so if anyone has any ideas, anyone has any cool little
• 1:21:50
  enclaves of car culture in any of these amazing North American
• 1:21:53
  cities, let me know. Because yeah, we're just keen to
• 1:21:56
  to come out and, and, you know, experience some of this great
• 1:22:00
  country and some of these awesome cars.
• 1:22:03
  We're also doing a film. We've got a wonderful again,
• 1:22:05
  another really, really interest, genuinely interesting
• 1:22:09
  documentary that Ryan has produced where he has met with a
• 1:22:14
  young lady who's an only fans creator, an adult content
• 1:22:17
  creator who has just the most amazing collection of cars, real
• 1:22:21
  honest enthusiast car. She and her husband wrench on
• 1:22:24
  them together and and they do it for the love of it.
• 1:22:27
  And and you know, her and Ryan have a very frank conversation
• 1:22:30
  about the interplay between what she does and and what she likes
• 1:22:33
  to do, the collecting and the the cars and and how the cars
• 1:22:36
  can help. But she doesn't want to sort of
• 1:22:37
  be seen as someone who who's relying on the cars for clicks
• 1:22:41
  and things like that. So it's it's really interesting
• 1:22:42
  piece, very thoughtfully and well put together and obviously
• 1:22:46
  with with great buy in from our subject, a young lady called
• 1:22:49
  Jesse. And yeah, I don't know, they
• 1:22:52
  won't all be as as clever as that one.
• 1:22:55
  A lot of them will just be stupid stuff like us going for
• 1:22:58
  Rd. trips. But isn't that just so fun?
• 1:23:01
  It's fun to shoot with about. Yeah, genuinely excited for
• 1:23:04
  this, this contact. Thank you.
• 1:23:05
  It's yeah, something new. It's something different.
• 1:23:07
  And thank you. Yeah.
• 1:23:09
  Yeah. There's an open invite from Ryan
• 1:23:11
  if you want to reach out to the Denver region.
• 1:23:13
  I'm. Telling you we've got a great
• 1:23:15
  car scene. Here, mate, I'm going to be in
• 1:23:17
  Denver on. I'm going to be in Denver on
• 1:23:19
  next Wednesday. We're coming up to, we're coming
• 1:23:22
  up to film with Earth Roma. You know those guys that.
• 1:23:24
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Earth.
• 1:23:27
  Is it Earth Roamer? Earth Roamer, Dustin and Yeah.
• 1:23:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fort Collins, I think I.
• 1:23:32
  Think so. I think you're right, yeah.
• 1:23:34
  Absolutely. Those things are fantastic.
• 1:23:36
  Yeah, that's very cool. That was on the list.
• 1:23:38
  I think it's a flying time, but but I would love to come out
• 1:23:41
  maybe in the summertime. And yeah, we think we can spend
• 1:23:44
  a few days doing some fun car stuff.
• 1:23:46
  You let me know, visit for Pikes Peak.
• 1:23:48
  That's that's the win. Oh, yeah.
• 1:23:50
  Oh, yeah. That's something I've never
• 1:23:52
  done. That's that's one to do, isn't
• 1:23:54
  it? Good thinking.
• 1:23:55
  Yeah. Sort that out.
• 1:23:56
  Dan, can I leave that with you when you sort that out?
• 1:23:57
  Yeah, I'll make it happen. Just let me know when I can get
• 1:24:00
  that 40 grand check into my bank.
• 1:24:02
  Now. You're a Maserati, it'll be
• 1:24:05
  amazing. All right mate, all right, I'm
• 1:24:07
  on it. Actually, I think Dan prefers
• 1:24:09
  the Chevy Equinox at Pike, No, Is it?
• 1:24:12
  Ford, the Ford is it? Right?
• 1:24:13
  Right. We went a couple of years ago
• 1:24:16
  and a Long story short we ended up getting on the mountain way
• 1:24:19
  too early and sleeping in a Ford Edge.
• 1:24:22
  Oh no, that's what. It was.
• 1:24:23
  So but it was an amazing experience.
• 1:24:25
  It was life changing. Like I had the whole of the
• 1:24:27
  trunk to myself it. Was the last changing it?
• 1:24:31
  Yeah, it was just sharp edges in that Ford Edge.
• 1:24:34
  That's true. That's true.
• 1:24:35
  Yeah. No bears attacked.
• 1:24:37
  It was amazing. Well, let's let's go for a three
• 1:24:41
  row. If we're going to all be
• 1:24:42
  camping, absolutely. Yeah, well, I look forward to
• 1:24:44
  that and I trust that you will get in touch.
• 1:24:47
  We've got a really wonderful enthusiast community here and
• 1:24:50
  I'd love to share it. So that's what we like.
• 1:24:52
  Joe, I've got to give a shout out to our mutual pal, Matt
• 1:24:55
  Hunter. Matt was actually my date last
• 1:24:58
  night, 40th anniversary screening of my favorite film
• 1:25:01
  and dance, Stand By Me. You're kidding.
• 1:25:05
  No way it's it's, it holds up so well.
• 1:25:08
  I think Matt's still. Recovering it now, yeah.
• 1:25:10
  Oh. My God, Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:25:12
  Each, You know, especially on the big screen, you keep, you
• 1:25:14
  pick up on things you wouldn't have picked up on.
• 1:25:16
  It just means something different to me as wow as a 50
• 1:25:18
  year old than it did when I was 10 and saw in the movie theater
• 1:25:21
  the last time, you know? Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  But Matt's the best. And.
• 1:25:25
  And. And that's how I know you and.
• 1:25:27
  Yes, just Matt, gosh, I think we probably all have this just
• 1:25:33
  these wonderful friendships that are like pretty much exclusively
• 1:25:38
  exist within the DM section of your Instagram.
• 1:25:42
  But but like, I have such fond friendships with him and with a
• 1:25:45
  couple of other guys like that, a couple of them never met like,
• 1:25:48
  but yeah, that's that's a sweetheart.
• 1:25:50
  And again, it just speaks to how cool that our community is, you
• 1:25:53
  know? Well, you you had a beer with
• 1:25:55
  another community member the other week, didn't you?
• 1:25:57
  Were. In yeah guy by the name of Matt
• 1:25:59
  Henry and and Matt travelled all the way from Alabama to Denver.
• 1:26:03
  Just have a couple beers with me, which isn't true.
• 1:26:06
  He came here for the hardware show at the Convention Center.
• 1:26:08
  But I really do appreciate him coming up really nice guy and he
• 1:26:11
  has a daughter who just started working at PEKLA at the Porsche
• 1:26:14
  Experience Center in LA. So there's that And you know, I
• 1:26:18
  really appreciated him coming up and appreciate whenever anyone
• 1:26:21
  reaches out, you know, it means a lot to us.
• 1:26:24
  And I guess on on that note, please don't forget to follow
• 1:26:28
  rate and review. I see we just got our very first
• 1:26:32
  one star review on Apple podcast.
• 1:26:34
  Thanks for all, I just it's been really there for me.
• 1:26:38
  So we need to get that average back up everyone.
• 1:26:41
  So yeah, anyway, but so wonderful getting to know you,
• 1:26:44
  Joe and and hearing your stories and everything else.
• 1:26:47
  I I hope you'll come back. Oh yeah, that would be all that.
• 1:26:51
  Yeah, this is a late night in New York for Joe.
• 1:26:54
  He's given up his evening to come join us this evening.
• 1:26:56
  So no, no. No, thank you for thank you for
• 1:27:00
  having me. Before we close out the show, we
• 1:27:03
  are super close to announce a couple of new sponsors, but
• 1:27:07
  there is also availability for sponsorship.
• 1:27:10
  So please contact us if you're interested in sponsoring.
• 1:27:14
  You know, we've obviously done a great job for various sponsors
• 1:27:17
  in the past. We've seen they've seen
• 1:27:19
  significant sales as a result of advertising with us.
• 1:27:22
  So if that's of interest, reach out to us and we'd be more than
• 1:27:25
  happy to talk to you. Indeed.
• 1:27:28
  Until next week, what is that phrase that pays Ryan?
• 1:27:31
  Well, we're that car show and always be driving.
• 1:27:35
  Joe, thank you so much. Thank you boys, it was a
• 1:27:38
  pleasure. Until next week, we're out.
• 1:27:41
  Cheers.