CAR COMPETITION
When I heard that Jeremy Clarkson had been sacked from Top Gear for punching an Irishman, I got straight on the phone to my agents and said, ‘I want to do that job.’ They replied, ‘Yeah, I can see it actually.’ And I replied, ‘Go on then, see what you can do . . . ’ Up until then, I’d kind of stumbled into everything. And out of all the jobs in TV, presenting Top Gear was the one I really wanted to do. That and presenting Question Time, but even I had to admit that unless every political journalist in the country was simultaneously wiped out in some freak accident, that was unlikely to happen.
Every idea I’d ever come up with, my agents Richard and Katie had managed to get me in front of the right people. But I’m glad they weren’t able to work a miracle in 2015. Not that I was really in a position to take the job anyway, but taking over from Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond would have been a poisoned chalice. Look what happened to Chris Evans when he started presenting the show – he got destroyed by the public and the media. I wasn’t surprised. Not that I’ve got anything against Chris, but Clarkson had made that show his own. I’m not sure I’d want to be mates with him – or if you’re even allowed to like him – but he was brilliant on Top Gear. How could he not have been? He made it one of the biggest shows in the world.
Three years later, I’d just finished filming an episode of A League of Their Own, which involved crawling through a muddy assault course in the studio, when my agent Richard wandered over with a big smile on his face and said, ‘I’ve got some good news. But you’re going to have to sit down.’ I did as I was told and Richard said, ‘Top Gear have been on the phone and they want you to do a screen test next week, if you’re up for it.’ I didn’t get too excited, because a screen test is just a trial, not a job offer. But I was bang up for it.
The opportunity had come at exactly the right time. I’d been thinking a lot about my TV career and whether I should do something else instead. I was still loving being on A League of Their Own, because I’d been doing it for eight years and grown so close to my fellow panellists, especially Jamie Redknapp and Romesh Ranganathan. But otherwise I was thinking about packing all the other TV stuff in. I didn’t want to do anything I wasn’t really interested in, so I was thinking about carrying on with A League of Their Own, doing some cricket commentary or presenting, and spending the rest of my time pottering. I enjoy being on TV and work hard at it, but it was never my dream and doesn’t give me the same buzz as being a cricketer. Playing cricket for Lancashire and England was all I’d ever wanted to do. So I knew that walking away from TV work wouldn’t be the same emotional wrench as retiring from cricket.
On a more basic level, I just loved cars. The car has got to be one of the greatest and most important inventions in history, right up there with the printing press, the light bulb and penicillin. The car is one of the few inventions that fundamentally changed the way humans lived, literally broadened people’s horizons. Nowadays, people will try to make you feel guilty about owning a car, unless it’s electric.
First, there isn’t an electric car I like. Second, we don’t have the infrastructure, in terms of enough charging points. Third, they’re not actually that good for the environment. Yes, they produce less pollution, but making the batteries requires the mining of rare metals and a lot of extra energy. I’ll need to have driven quite a lot of miles in my petrol car before it has the same environmental impact as a brand-new electric car. And because I change my cars quite a lot, I’m probably doing less damage to the environment than someone who drives an electric car. I’m not some knee-jerk reactionary who is against electric cars on principle, I’d actually like to get one eventually. But only when the cars get better, the infrastructure improves and it can be proved beyond doubt that driving one is better for the planet.
But whether you’re into electric cars or petrol, gears or automatics, cars are such a big part of our everyday life that I struggle with people who say they’re not into cars. They’re lying. If you own a car and you drive a car, then you’re into cars. You might not know anything about cars, but you’re into them, whether you think you are or you don’t. And I really can’t get my head around people who don’t drive. I can’t even imagine it. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be 17 so that I could get behind a wheel. It meant freedom, being able to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted. The reason I failed my test the first two times was because it was so important to me. The first time I failed on a dangerous (I thought there was more than enough room on the roundabout to get home, he disagreed). The second time I got a minor fault. As soon as I’d done it, I knew I’d failed. So I thought, ‘I’m going to give him the ride of his life . . . ’ The third time I knew the bloke, which was nice. He played cricket for Morecambe and I used to play against him, so we talked about old times for 20 minutes before he said, ‘You better do one of those emergency stops. If you want.’ That was pretty much that, he passed me.
My first car was a black Fiat Uno, which I rented for a few months after passing my test (at the third attempt). Driving it, I looked like one of the Ant Hill Mob from Wacky Races, because I could almost stick my arms out of the windows and pick it up. When you’re a cricketer, you’re always trying to get a car for free. Even to this day, I’m always trying to get free cars, it’s just ingrained in me. My missus had a Kia Sorento for a while, because I got it for free. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lovely car. But after a while she started asking questions, because it was usually parked next to my Ferrari. Back when I started playing, some of the older players had their names on the side of their cars: ‘Neil Fairbrother – sponsored by Lookers’. I didn’t want that, but Lancashire had a deal with Rover whereby I could rent one of their cars for 1 per cent of its value a month, plus about 30 quid for insurance. That worked out at about 150 quid a month. It’s not as if they were going to let me have a 220 Turbo, so my first Rover was a 216 Coupé. I didn’t drink at the time, so used to ferry my mates around on nights out. And every night without fail I’d get stopped by the police, because driving that car in Preston was the equivalent of driving a McLaren in Chelsea. I upgraded to a 216 cabriolet in blue, but there was obviously a mix-up, because when it arrived it was purple. So when I got a pay rise, I upgraded to a 620ti, which wasn’t quite the stuff of Alan Partridge’s dreams (I believe he drove a Rover 825), but not far off. Alas, someone went into the back of it when I was on my way to a game in Cheadle. On the bright side, I got a grand for the whiplash, taped the boot closed and carried on.
The first car I bought was a Porsche Boxster on tick when I was 21 (which came in handy on Top Gear, because one of the episodes involved us driving around Ethiopia in our first cars – Paddy had an Escort 1.6 and Chris had a Mini). I was on tour in Pakistan at the time and obviously feeling a bit bored and sorry for myself. When it turned up, it wasn’t quite the colour I thought it was going to be. I knew it was going to be blue, but it was a bit brighter than advertised. But I loved that car, until one night I was driving down a country lane in Hale. It was quite icy, so I was taking plenty of care, creeping around these corners at 10 mph, when this B-registration Metro came hurtling towards me. I slammed on the brakes, but this Metro couldn’t stop and hit me front on. It hadn’t been going very fast – 5 mph at most – but the whole of my front end fell off. This Metro didn’t have a scratch on it and its driver refused liability. So after that, the gloves came off.
My next car was a BMW M5, which came third-hand via the golfers Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke, who were part of the same management company. That car was a dream, unlike the Overfinch Range Rover I made the mistake of buying. I drove over a pothole and two wheels cracked, and when I drove through a big puddle (I promise it was nothing more than that), the undertray fell off.
When I took it back to the garage the bloke said, ‘What have you been doing?’
‘I drove through a puddle . . . ’
I picked the car up three days later, drove through the same puddle on the way home (at nothing more than 30 mph) and the undertray fell off again, so I gave it back. When it comes to cars, appearance can be deceptive.
My Ford F-150 Harley Davidson pickup was a beautiful thing to look at – to drive, not so much. In a straight line it was a scream, but around corners the back end was everywhere, unless you had a tonne of bricks in the back. Which, funnily enough, I never did. I was driving to a mate’s house one day, went round a bend (not that fast, I should add) and the back end came out. When I tried correcting it, it went the other way and ploughed through a fence. I ended up in a field with half a bush in my car, because I had the windows down. When I tried to start it again, it was knackered. I got out, this bloke came over to see if I was all right and we had started having a bit of a laugh. Bad timing. Right on cue, the farmer’s wife turned up with some field hands and started shouting at me about the fact I could have killed her horses. I tried to defuse the situation with a bit of humour – ‘Oh, I did notice some horses, but they must have scarpered when they saw me coming through the fence’ – but that didn’t go down too well either and everyone started shouting at me even louder. So I walked the rest of the way to my mate’s house and a few hours later flew over the wreck in his helicopter, on the way to the races. I did eventually get the car towed out, but never drove it again.
There came a time when England cricketers stopped driving Rovers with their name on the side and started driving significantly more extravagant vehicles, but not many could afford anything ridiculous. I recall Kevin Pietersen driving a Ferrari before the 2009 Ashes series, but he was paying an extortionate amount of money and only had it for a few weeks. I used to get a deal from Volkswagen, and it was only really when I stopped playing cricket that I started wasting money on cars. When I was asked to try out for Top Gear, my daily drive was a ten-year-old black Porsche 997 Turbo, which was just about everything I wanted in a car. Plus, I had a Mercedes GLS350d for family stuff, a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti and a Lamborghini Murcielago. That car was a work of art and just beautiful to look at, but I felt like a knobhead driving it. It had carbon bucket seats that you couldn’t put back, I couldn’t use the indicator going left because my knee was in the way and after driving it for more than half an hour I was sore. In the end, I had to get rid of it. That was a shameful story in itself. This fella came round to pick it up, because he was taking it to a garage in Preston to sell it for me, and my drive was covered in cars. I have an irrational hatred of other people’s cars being on my drive, it just makes me very angry. So I probably backed the Lambo out of my garage a bit sharpish and went straight into my Rolls-Royce Phantom. At that point, my anger curdled into disappointment at what I’d become. I stormed into the house and started shouting about selling everything – the Lambo, the Rolls, the Ferrari, the Porsche, the lot!
I’d wanted a Rolls-Royce for years and particularly loved the look of the Phantom Drophead. The only thing that stopped me from buying one was the prospect of looking like a dick. But when I drove one, I had to have it. Looking back, I don’t know whether that was a moment of weakness or strength. It’s an amazing car but there are still times when I think, ‘I’m driving a Rolls. Does this make me a complete bellend?’ There are certain places I’ll take it and certain places I won’t. I’d think twice about taking it back to Preston and when I take it to the gym, it either looks like I’ve stolen it or I’m cleaning it for someone more sophisticated than me. For a while, I told myself I was driving it ironically. But I got that out of my system. It’s a beautiful car, a work of art as much as anything, and I just love looking at it and driving it.
I don’t like spending lots of money on things, apart from cars. They’re my only real extravagance and I’ve learned not to feel apologetic about owning them. I’m not passionate about many other things and don’t have many other hobbies, and it’s not as if I’m driving around with the windows down, shouting, ‘I’m here in my Rolls! Look at me! Look at me!’ And because I spend a lot of time in my cars, I want cars that I really like. Unlike other things, the joy of owning, looking at and driving a beautiful car never really wears off, at least not for me.
But I digress (cars have that effect on me). The screen test was at some army place in Nottingham, which was handy, because the boys were playing in a cricket tournament nearby and I could slip off for the day. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous. It wasn’t like when I auditioned for the musical Fat Friends, when I was thinking, ‘It will be nice if I get this, but no problems if not.’ I really wanted the gig, it was what I really wanted to do, so the competitive juices were flowing. They’d sent me a script, but I only scanned it. That wasn’t me being cocky, I just didn’t see myself as a presenter. If they’d wanted a presenter, they could have found loads who were better than me at learning lines and reading an autocue. The best chance I had of landing the job was simply by being me.
I did learn a few things about the car I was asked to drive, a Dacia Duster, and I very quickly forgot that the cameras were rolling. I was paired with Chris Harris, who can review a car better than anyone. After we’d spent a couple of hours dicking about, I thought I’d done okay, because the people in charge started talking about concrete things like filming dates. They told me that they were making the decision the following week, and I was desperate to get the gig, but when I didn’t hear anything then, or the week after, or the week after that, I thought they’d plumped for someone else. Then one day, about six weeks after my screen test, I was in the back of Rachael’s car, travelling through Altrincham with the kids, and Richard called. He said, ‘Are you on your own?’
‘No. I’m in the car. But I’ll get Rachael to stop somewhere.’
Rachael pulled over, I got out and Richard said, ‘You’ve got the job.’
Not many things excite me, but this did. The only thing I can compare it to is getting that phone call saying I’d been selected for England. It wasn’t as big, because playing for England was a childhood dream and winning my first England cap came out of the blue, but it was a similar feeling. And, in a weird way, it made me happier, maybe because I’d started to think I’d never do anything again that really thrilled me. I loved cars and I loved travelling, so it was another dream job. I couldn’t get my head around it for weeks. I had no idea why they picked me, and I tried not to think about it. Why did it matter?
Things started snowballing from there, although I had to keep the whole thing a big secret, like I’d become a Freemason. And when my eldest son got all excited about me working with Joey from Friends, I had to explain to him that the reason I’d been offered the job was because Joey had left. I kept looking online, to see if anything had leaked. Occasionally, I’d see quotes from someone else, saying they were in the frame, and I’d say, ‘Sorry, it’s not you mate.’ Then, a couple of weeks after accepting the job, I discovered that my co-presenter would be Paddy McGuinness. We didn’t know each other that well but the idea of two Lancashire lads – me from Preston and Paddy from Bolton – presenting Top Gear made me happy. And when me, Paddy and Chris spent a day filming together, doing promotional photos, messing about and getting to know each other, I started thinking, ‘You know what? We might just be all right here . . . ’
I knew there would be some negativity surrounding the new presenting line-up. Top Gear is meant to be a show about the fun that can be had driving cars, but some people take it far more seriously than that. Fans talk about it almost as if it’s sacred, and the way journalists write about it, you’d think it was the News at Ten. Clarkson, May and Hammond had built it into this global brand that had obviously become very important to the BBC, and when Clarkson got sacked and the others left as well, people lost their shit. But I had to ignore all of that, otherwise I’d have been overcome by fear and unable to do it. It helped that I’d done serious stuff, including documentaries on mental health and eating disorders, useful programmes that might actually help people. So I was able to think, ‘You know what? Top Gear is the biggest and best TV job you’ll ever have. That on its own is enough to keep you on your toes. You might get found out, but what’s the worst that can happen? You’re not saving lives or anything, you’re just presenting a programme about cars. Some people will watch it, some won’t. It’s just a bit of TV, that’s all it is.’
I didn’t think about trying to compete with Clarkson, May and Hammond and being bigger and better. I was the 591st man to play Tests for England, which meant there were 590 men that came before me (including a May and a Hammond, both of them greats). I was always thankful for them paving the way, and that’s how I thought about Clarkson, May and Hammond. They had made Top Gear their own and were brilliant on it. So I understood why Clarkson made a few barbed comments about Top Gear after leaving. I’d have even understood if he’d come out and admitted he wanted it to go tits up. Clarkson said that when he was sacked from the show, it was like someone taking his baby away, and I can understand that. When I retired from cricket, I wasn’t ready to leave the stage either. And when someone else took my job, it was difficult. For Clarkson, it was Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc and then me and Paddy. For me, it was Ben Stokes. Things move on so fast and you’re quickly forgotten. Good job, too, because if you’re not quickly forgotten, things can’t be going right in your absence. I don’t resent Ben Stokes, and I don’t want him to fail (although I might resent him and want him to fail if he retired from cricket and nicked my job on Top Gear). But there would be something wrong with me if I didn’t think, ‘I’d love to still be doing what he’s doing.’
When I performed Fat Friends, we were only allowed to pin good reviews on the noticeboard. But I pinned one up that absolutely hammered me, I was honestly fine about it, I just did it as a joke. I’d like to think I was as blasé about the prospect of bad reviews for Top Gear, but if you’ve got every newspaper in the country hammering you, rather than the odd critic from the Lancashire press, I’m sure it takes its toll. But I’d taken plenty of flak as a cricketer. And, when it comes to TV, the public ultimately decides what someone can and can’t do. When I say ‘the public’, I don’t mean people ranting and raving and being abusive on social media, I mean people voting with their remote controls. If they switch off, the show goes under and/or I get canned. If they don’t, the show carries on and I can carry on presenting it.
When it came to starting filming, I was almost as excited as I’d been during my cricket career. I hadn’t had that feeling for a long time. When that music came on and I was stood there in the middle with Paddy and Chris, I couldn’t help thinking how bizarrely my life had turned out. I enjoyed doing the bits and pieces in the studio, but that world always feels a bit unnatural to me. I’ve never been a slave to the autocue, and they let me interpret things in my own way (because if I’m reading, you really know that I’m reading), but I prefer being out and about than doing links or presenting. I find it far easier reacting to things that naturally happen, which I suppose you would describe as being a bit loose and playing a slightly exaggerated version of yourself.
Before Top Gear, the TV jobs I’d loved most were those that gave me the opportunity to travel and all the life experiences that come with that. Top Gear was the same, in that we became totally immersed in wherever we ended up. In somewhere like Ethiopia, you stay where you can. It might be a nice lodge, but it might be little more than a hut. That’s fine with me, because I don’t really want to be staying in the Four Seasons anyway. I was blown away by Ethiopia, not least because even all these years later, I still associated it with its famine in the 1980s. But it was green and lush and absolutely beautiful.
Peru was incredible, one of the best places I’d ever been, with the loveliest, most welcoming people. Apparently, the Incas built their roads hundreds of years ago and they were so far ahead of their time, I couldn’t help thinking that aliens were somehow involved. Like the pyramids in Egypt, I just don’t see how it was possible otherwise. Driving through Peru was just incredible – Chris in his Dart, me in my VW campervan, which I’ve always loved but had never had the chance to drive. Travelling with Paddy was brilliant, because he’s so enthusiastic about everything. By his own admission, he wasn’t very well travelled before he did Top Gear, so he was like someone who had opened his eyes for the very first time. And that kind of child-like curiosity is infectious.
I don’t think I could have done the job a few years earlier, because I didn’t listen too much when I was playing cricket. I rated myself as a driver, but I’m pretty sure every bloke does. And you’ve got to listen hard when someone is teaching you how to drive a car at 150 mph, otherwise things can go wrong. And even when you do listen, things can still go wrong. Which they did. The second crash happened in Mansfield, when I was racing Paddy and Chris around the city centre, misjudged a bend and ploughed my retro pickup truck straight into a market stall. Luckily, the market stall was empty. The first was when I rolled a hearse in Wales. I blame Chris for that one. I was trying to muscle this hearse around a corner, he was egging me on and I hit a bump. Having lost control of the wheel for a second I thought, ‘We’re going to be all right, it’s going to come back’, before the hearse started to go over and everything seemed to slow down. I’d rolled a car and it felt the same, so when we were upside down I thought, ‘Actually, we’ll be all right.’ It was only when I heard Chris shouting to Paddy in the back, and not getting a reply, that I started panicking. It’s one thing hurting yourself, but you don’t want to hurt anyone else. Luckily, Paddy wasn’t dead, he was just in a state of shock.
Then there was the time I crashed a three-wheeled cycle-car during a drag race at Elvington Airfield. I was lying on my front, hurtling along at 124 mph (which, to be fair to the vehicle’s owner, was 4 mph faster than he told me it could go) when I overshot the runaway and spun off. People told me there was a huge bang before I disappeared in a cloud of dust. Elvington was where Richard Hammond almost killed himself while filming for Top Gear a few years back, so Paddy, Chris and the crew were obviously quite concerned. But after being checked over by the medics, I was back on my feet and back at it. The media made it sound as if I’d almost died, but when the footage was broadcast, it looked more ridiculous than dangerous. And it took my kids two days to find out how I was: ‘Mum said you had a bit of an accident?’
Me and Paddy were half-decent drivers (and Paddy says he likes to tinker under the bonnet, although I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet), but when we saw what Chris could do behind a wheel, we realised we were nowhere near. I like how they look, I like driving them, I know a fast car from a slow car, and I can probably do what most men can do: fill them up with petrol, check the oil, change a tyre. But that’s about it. I’m not a mechanic or a racing driver, and I’m not trying to be anything I’m not. And I’ve never met anyone who knows as much about cars as Chris, which is why I ask him questions all the time. It’s like being a kid in a cricket team, soaking up knowledge from the senior player. When Chris speaks, we listen, even if we don’t know what he’s talking about, which is a lot of the time. It’s also why Chris does most of the ‘proper’ driving. He can do pieces to camera while driving at 200 mph in a Ferrari 488 – sideways. He’ll be talking as if he’s tootling down to the supermarket: ‘What do I need to get again? Bread and milk?’ I didn’t want any of my driving to be faked, so when you see me flying around a track, that’s actually me – they don’t do close-ups of my face and cut to long shots of someone else behind the wheel. If Chris is driving something, that probably means neither me nor Paddy could do it.
My driving is getting better, which means I’m getting to do more and more things. I love driving a car very fast around a track, but it’s the off-road driving I enjoy most. Me and Chris competed in the Formula Offroad in Iceland, which involves driving 1600 horsepower buggies up the sides of cliffs. We also competed in the Baja 1000 in Mexico, but I didn’t get the chance to drive because the car fell apart while Chris was doing the first leg. But I can’t see myself driving in any kind of professional capacity any time soon.
There are different levels of competition and I could probably get into some of them. But first, I don’t really have the time. And second, I couldn’t be doing with all the faffing about. If you could just turn up to the track, jump in the car and drive, that would be brilliant. But you’ve got to test them and go through all the mechanics and the rest, which would just bore me. Plus, my competitive spirit has nearly disappeared. Whether it’s Top Gear or A League of Their Own, I do a lot of competitive stuff, but I’m not bothered about winning any more. I know where desperately wanting to win takes me, because that’s how I used to live my life. And it’s not a fun place. When you’re a sportsperson, winning takes on a whole different meaning. It’s literally your job to win. But needing to win all the time is exhausting. I no longer want to be like that, because if all your energy is focused on winning, you miss out on other stuff – like enjoying yourself, which is what I’m supposed to be doing now. In my new career, I’m not judged on winning or losing. Driving around a dirt track while someone is squirting cattle lubricant in your face isn’t exactly the Ashes. That’s not to say I don’t still have to work on it. There was one segment in the last series of Top Gear that involved us playing the equivalent of musical chairs with cars. I was driving and I completely wiped Chris out. I wasn’t particularly proud of myself. For that split second, the competitive juices started surging through my veins and I had to have that parking spot.
I’ve driven an Austin Allegro through Borneo and an old Porsche Boxster through Ethiopia, as well as a £250,000 car around a track, which is impossible not to love. I did sometimes think, ‘This is madness’, but the only time I say no to anything is if I think it’s a shit idea, not because it might be dangerous. So when they said they wanted me to do a bungee jump in Switzerland, off a 400-ft dam in a convertible Metro, I immediately said yes.
I’d done bungee jumps before, including off a dam for A League of Their Own. And while I realised that there were a few more moving parts involved doing a bungee jump in a car, I wasn’t too bothered. It just seemed like a fun way to spend an afternoon, and I was sure they’d filled in all the relevant health and safety forms. The stunt was dressed up as an experiment, to prove that a nineties’ Rover can accelerate faster than an Ariel Atom, which can go from 0–60 mph in just over two seconds. In truth, it was a bit of theatre designed to scare the shit out of me. Because everything had to look perfect for TV and they had to set up lots of different camera shots, I was sitting in that car for an hour and a half. After about five minutes, I started to feel quite comfortable. It was a case of, ‘Right, lads, I’m ready when you are, drop me whenever you want.’ But after about half an hour, lots of things started going through my mind. When you’re doing a normal bungee jump, you’ve got a rope around your feet, so you know you’re attached to something. But in a car, you can’t feel anything. You’re just suspended in mid-air. So I started thinking, ‘This car is just attached to a crane. What if the crane isn’t properly attached to something and topples over? And that crane driver didn’t look too confident. I hope these ropes are going to kick in . . . Why am I doing this?’ It was utterly terrifying. And when they finally dropped me, it was truly horrific.
Having done that bungee jump, I do wonder what they’re going to come up with next. What I do know is that they’ve already got their most depraved minds on it.
It doesn’t matter what it is – business, politics, acting, sport or TV – once you start thinking you’ve cracked it and are doing well, that’s when it will all come crashing down. But our first series of Top Gear was a great start. The relationships between the three presenters got tighter episode after episode and it gave us a great platform to build on. The humour wasn’t the same as in the Clarkson era, because it couldn’t be. The world has changed and things that used to be acceptable aren’t any more. We just don’t come close to the line that shouldn’t be crossed. It’s more about having a laugh and rooting for each other. Then, in the second series, we were able to push the boundaries a bit more and do even more audacious things. The ratings for the first two series were so good that they’re moving the third series from BBC2 to BBC1, for the first time in its modern history. People wanted their Top Gear back, and I’m so pleased we were able to give it to them. One thing’s for sure, Top Gear fans have been more positive than cricket fans were when I was playing.
Personally, I always just tried to be myself, which seems to have worked. I’ve also got more confident behind the wheel and haven’t stopped learning new things. I know that there are many more polished TV presenters than me, and while there’s still an element of me turning up each day and thinking I’m going to get found out, I feel more confident in my own skin than I used to. People sometimes ask me if I feel like I’ve got imposter syndrome. Have I heck! I did have imposter syndrome when I was playing cricket. I’d look around the dressing room, consider the great players who played for England before me and feel like I shouldn’t be spoken about in the same breath as them. That’s because playing sport is a quantifiable skill. But when it comes to TV, I look around and think, ‘Why should I not be doing this?’ Not because I’m very good, but simply because if they can do it, why can’t I? I’m all over it, don’t worry about that.
I’d never really watched anything I’d done, including playing cricket. The thought of sitting there watching myself on TV always just seemed a bit weird. But the kids are now at that age when they want to sit and watch stuff as a family, including anything I’m in, so I don’t have much of a choice. Sometimes it’s embarrassing because I’ll be dressed in drag or performing as a Chippendale on A League of Their Own. But mostly when I’m watching Top Gear, I cringe and think, ‘That’s not you, stop presenting!’ But I’m a lot more comfortable than I used to be. Viewers seem to like people who throw themselves into things, and that’s how I see it, as an opportunity to do stuff that most people would never get the chance to do.
My kids will sometimes say to me, ‘Dad, what did you do today?’
‘Oh, I just rolled a funeral hearse.’
‘Where are you going next week?’
‘Nepal.’
I think in some ways they think I’m a bit of an embarrassing dad, and in other ways they enjoy the fact I do a different job to most dads.