Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond are back with another high-octane The Grand Tour special, this time following the trio as they drive across Scandinavia.
While their latest special, A Scandi Flick, kicks off The Grand Tour’s fifth season, the straight-talking trio have been talking cars and road testing them on TV for decades.
Clarkson is now 62 and May is pushing into that decade at 59, while scrappy terrier Hammond is the youngster of the group – and constant butt of hair dye jokes – at 52.
Despite glimmers of age creeping in during this latest Scandi tale, as May creeps along an ice-bedded floor with trepidation and Clarkson opts for a car with comfort as opposed to one up to rally-style code, they have no intention of slowing down.
May bore the brunt of this special’s mishaps when he buried his car into a concrete wall at speed and then later collapsed through a thin sheaf of ice, prompting a rickety rescue operation from his co-stars.
Yet he insisted the task of driving around for TV “isn’t particularly arduous”, with the tough slog in Scandinavia only coming when his tunnel smash broke the heater, forcing him to drive the remainder of the trip bundled in a thick coat and jumper.
“There are far bigger problems in the world,” May said. “I think we'll probably keep doing it until one of us just dies.”
He continued: “Which might be quite soon, when you look at the three of us – Jeremy especially, but I don't think the actual nature of the filming will stop us.
“We're not doing cave diving or attempting to play international football, where our age would count against us.
“I know someone who's in the 90s still driving around in the car quite happily and that's what we do, so I think we'll be able to just keep going until somebody tells us to stop because they've had enough of us.”
Hammond painted a similar picture as he said that if there was a “stop button” for The Grand Tour series, he would never be the one to press it.
He explained: “I'd never want to not do it. Because that'd be rude to fail to appreciate how bloody lucky I've been to get to do all that.”
He continued: “We're all very tough and heroic. There's always a bit when you realise this is great doing this TV show and everything, but right now I'm trying to sleep in a tent pitched at 45 degrees in a ditch full of cockroaches in Bolivia or in a scorching desert or I'm trying to sleep in a shed somewhere in Scandinavia.
“It mustn't be forgotten that there are real experiences. It's discomfort that tends to be the one that gets you.”
The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick will launch on 16th September on Prime Video.
