By Casey Liss
 

Chris Harris, a popular automotive journalist in his own right, on how Top Gear’s evolution away from facts and toward entertainment paved the way for his show:

And I cannot say how thankful I am that it kind of became less about cars over time because in doing so it gave my little show the oxygen to survive. The only creative rule myself and Neil have ever consistently adhered to is to never try and be TG. Never try to be too funny. Don’t go on adventures. Don’t do anything that could usher you into direct comparison with TG because you will automatically look shit.

On the future of Top Gear:

What comes next? I have no idea. I’ve always struggled to understand how Jeremy could do his thing on a commercially-funded channel. I suppose therein lies the crazy paradox at the center of this whole episode. Jeremy and his pal Andy Wilman turned a car program into a mouthpiece for an entire tranche of middle England fed-up with the nanny state and in search of simple entertainment, but the only place it could flourish was within a quasi-state-funded broadcaster that didn’t have to answer to advertisers, but which is fundamentally left-leaning and against the type of personality Jeremy represents. It would be easy to conclude that they couldn’t live with each other, and that they won’t be able to live without each other.