Why Top Gear is still Sunday night mind candy

Picture: BBC

When I departed British shores in 1999 the nation was still getting used to the idea of 'multi-channel television'. Until 1982, there had only been three terrestrial offerings, and with Sky launching in 1989, bringing with it five satellite stations, the choice extended only so far. Last October, however, when I returned to the UK, the number had spread into the 500s, with all manner of reality TV crap and a rotating curriculum of sharks, killer snakes, air crashes, Nazis and Alaskan truckers populating the myriad digital platforms on offer.

However, amongst all of that is the televisual comfort food that is the channel Dave. On any given evening I can now indulge several years of missed episodes of Mock The Week, QI and Have I Got News For You. Regardless of their place in the actual chronology, seeing such shows out of sequence is a baffling, but entertaining exercise in watching the ageing process, as hairlines recede and what's left goes progressively grey. No show, though, is as acute a exhibition of the ageing process than repeats on Dave of Top Gear - the Clarkson, May and Hammond years. As we all now agree, its 2002 reboot turned out to be a masterstroke, transforming a worthy-but-dull magazine show (which began 40 years ago last Saturday) into an infotainment format that borrowed heavily from TFI Friday's mix of banter and recurring gags in front of a studio audience.

Via Dave we can see many things: Jeremy Clarkson's expanding paunch and gradually shrinking "pubic" haircut, James May's blind ignorance of fashion, and Richard Hammond's almost slavish fashion victimhood. But mostly we can see what unique chemistry developed between the three of them. No matter how stereotypical public school-boorish you find Clarkson or how over-exaggerated both May's shirts and Hammond's mannerisms can be, rarely can you say that a presentation team can combine such a brilliant combination of humour, enthusiasm for the subject and a form of camaraderie.

Some of the Clarkson, May and Hammond filmed challenges - especially anything in Italy but also the specials from Vietnam, Africa, India and even the controversial Burma and Patagonia films - have been amongst the best factual television I've seen. Beautifully filmed, cleverly edited and, obviously, smartly written. And all bearing very little resemblance to the original Top Gear, with its public service dreariness about pushrods and fan belt timings.

So, when Clarkson's contretemps with a producer led to the trio leaving the BBC and setting up shop at Amazon, the BBC's task, in retaining the 'new' Top Gear format with a new presenting team, was always going to be a tall order. And thus it proved: realistically speaking, the relaunch - with Chris Evans, Matt Le Blanc, Eddy Jordan, motoring journalists Chris Harris and Rory Reid, and German racing driver Sabine Schmitz - was a let-down. No fault, perhaps, of their own, given the intense brand created by their predecessors, but the end execution looked as clumsy and forced as the previous incarnation had appeared relatively natural.

Picture: BBC

With Evans stepping down, and the show focusing on Le Blanc, Harris and Reid for the second series of the 'new-new' Top Gear - which came to a close last night - the BBC had clearly listened to the criticism. Well, mostly. Fan reaction over the course of the seven-show season has progressively warmed, with sentiment - if Twitter is anything to go by - suggesting that giving Le Blanc the proverbial Clarkson 'lead' role has "saved" Top Gear.

There is no doubt that Top Gear has unproved vastly over this second series, and Le Blanc has indeed been a major part of that, despite his American pronunciations of "Jag-wah" and "Nee-san". Like his Hollywood compatriot Jay Leno, Le Blanc is a bona fide petrolhead (sorry, "gearhead") who clearly put his stratospheric income from Friends to good use in owning a series of high-end motors over the years. Indeed, the common denominator between all three main presenters is their knowledge. Harris - who bafflingly continues to divide fans - is a clear expert, while Rory Reid - when he gets screen time... - shows a similarly engaging enthusiasm for the subject.

In the absence of Clarkson, May and Hammond, whose chemistry and individual personalities became quickly evident as their incarnation got going, Le Blanc, Harris and Reid are still somewhat disparate, but not far off. Individually, Reid's race around the Nürburgring with Schmitz, lapping supercars in a Volkswagen Golf, was wonderful, with Reid's boyish excitement palpable. Likewise, Harris's race against Le Blanc through the Middle East in a £2 million Bugatti Chiron was terrific fun, even it was just a variation on previous supercar challenges.

Picture: BBC

Thankfully there have also been some extremely entertaining and inventive features. Harris and Le Blanc's 'four seasons' challenge with a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder and a Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, ending in one of my favourite places - California's Mammoth Lakes - had just the right mix of Top Gear stupidity, risk and banter, combined with two beautiful-looking cars. Reid's giant arcade game, pitting a Renault Twingo GT against two similar-size city cars in an automotive version of PacMan, may have been a redux of Clarkson and May playing rugby with Kia hatchbacks, but it was nonetheless entertainingly exciting. This, at the end of the day, is what Top Gear viewers want.

Top Gear does, though, still have plenty of work to do. It's single biggest problem continues to be the studio segments, where the banter seems forced and celebrity appearances have also been particularly awkward. The previous Star In A Reasonably Priced Car format was tight and to the point, even with stars as huge as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz as guests. Now, the star is brought out for what seems like forever, supporting little more than a chat show format built around a timed lap in a not-so reasonably priced Toyota GT86.

David Tennant gushed like a luvvie throughout his appearance, while there was a sense of recycling in bringing back Ross Noble for no obvious reason and, last night, Jamiroquai's Jay Kay, who proved himself to be an even bigger cock than usual, with his dark glasses and nothing particular to say (apart from an encyclopedic knowledge of supercars).

At least, though, Le Blanc ended the 24th 'new' Top Gear series looking forward to a 25th, so seemingly the BBC is happy to continue with its lucrative merchandise-spinning asset. If anything, continued improvement to the format will reaffirm Top Gear as a car show, first, and a vehicular version of Last Of The Summer Wine a distant second (and which Clarkson, May and Hammond have almost removed the need for by taking their antics to Amazon with The Grand Tour).

What Top Gear's producers must take on board (and I can't that they haven't already) is that the previous presenting triumvirate was unique, a rare piece of onscreen combination that played on the individual personas of Clarkson's oafishness, May's fuddyness and Hammond's boyish charm. Le Blanc, Harris and Reid's personalities have yet to come to the fore, especially the latter, and they must be allowed to develop their own, more polished style. But on the evidence of these seven shows - even last night's, which was the weakest of the run, it's clear that Top Gear is putting behind it the egomaniacal mess of its Chris Evans-fronted relaunch. More importantly, this second series under new management has started to restore Top Gear to what it had become until that unfortunate incident involving an absent steak dinner - the perfect mind candy to wind down the weekend with on a Sunday afternoon. Or every weekday afternoon on Dave, if you're reading this in the future.

Picture: BBC

Look up here, I'm in heaven - Bowie one year on

© Simon Poulter 2017

It probably took me the best part of that Monday morning to take it all in. Because it just didn't seem true, let alone expected. Or even logical. Three mornings previously I'd eagerly started to consume Blackstar, like everyone else blissfully unaware of - or subconsciously ignoring - the clues that, now, seem far less than cryptic. As I had done as a teenager with a new purchase, I listened to the album non-stop throughout the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, first as the overnight iTunes download and then - as soon as I'd been able to get out of the house and down to the FNAC on the Champs-Élysées (then my nearest record shop) -  the CD. Yes, we music heads are somewhat obsessive-compulsive like that: I needed a physical confirmation that Bowie's new album was real. To acquire it required taking Line 9 of the Métro to Franklin D. Roosevelt station, where poster ads for Blackstar adorned the entire length of the platform walls, further proof that, by any dimension, this was a major album launch, from a major artist. The fact that this would only be the second album from that artist in 13 years only added to the sense of occasion.

And it was strange and confounding and oh-so definitely Bowie. Blackstar won nothing but rave reviews. I myself wrote, in what would significantly be the final post of my What Would David Bowie Do? blog: "★is simply stunning. You might have expected me to say that but, trust me, I don't out of slavish sycophanticism. Because, creatively, conceptually and, most of all, musically, it has exceeded expectations. It is the Bowie album I wanted, and we needed."

I wasn't alone. "The overall effect is ambiguous and spellbinding, adjectives that apply virtually throughout Blackstar," wrote Alex Petridis in The Guardian. "It’s a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music." That appeared on the 7th. How were we - anyone - to know what lay behind Bowie's restlessness.

He was, though, and in the words of Blackstar producer and long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, "at the top of his game". As we now know from David Bowie: The Last Five Years, Francis Whately's wonderful BBC2 documentary screened last Saturday, Bowie was already undergoing treatment for cancer when he brought together a relatively unknown group of jazz-minded musicians at The Magic Shop studio in New York's SoHo, not far from his home. The assumption was that cancer was simply something Bowie was dealing with, but once his death became known, the resultant record's themes of reflection and even acceptance of mortality made perfect sense. "Look up here, I'm in heaven," opened Lazarus, the third track. "I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama, can't be stolen, Everybody knows me now".

Whether, though, he knew his condition was terminal as he wrote the album is not fully clear. The lyrical prescience is chillingly uncanny. But by the time Bowie came to make the promo videos for Blackstar's lead single and title track, as well as for Lazarus, he was ready to tell the Swedish video director Johan Renck over Skype that he was "very unwell and I'm probably going to die". The treatment had been stopped. Time - the untameable beast that smoked a cigarette in Rock'n'Roll Suicide - was running out on one of the most unique figures of the 20th century, even if he'd spent much of the 21st century at that point out of sight.

Dying so soon after releasing Blackstar could have been the most Bowie thing he could have done. A theatrical exit, enigmatic to the last. We may never know whether it was his desire to get the album out, or whether some other force kept alive long enough. Or, simply, the emotional release of bringing out his final record exhausting his failing body. But whether, in hindsight, Bowie's death can be explained, it was still unreal. The release of an album for any living artist - let alone such a storied figure as David Bowie, with close to 50 years of recording behind him and all those flirtations with myriad musical styles and changes of image - is always an event of excitement and trepidation.

For the fan, I've always maintained that nothing beats the first play of a new record. It's like disrupting virgin snowfall or unboxing a new iPhone. There is fevered expectation, nervousness even. Will it improve upon its predecessor? Will it be worse? Will it chart new creative territory? Will it move me? For Blackstar these emotions were accentuated by the fact that we had only just come to terms with Bowie being 'back' after extended absence. You could be forgiven for getting giddy at the sight of all those billboards and magazine back cover adverts trailing the arrival of a new album.

Rolling Stone/Jimmy King

We'd been treated to some wonderful, wicked Bowie teasery in the previous three years: waking up on the morning of his 66th birthday to see a tweet from Duncan Jones, his filmmaker son, revealing new music, the beautifully reflective single Where Are We Now?, followed by an entire album - The Next Day. Nothing for close to ten years, not even a hint, and then - BOOM - Bowie was back, back, BACK. The release of the bonkers, brilliant Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) in 2014 to herald the Nothing Has Changed compilation augured that Bowie was in a rich vein of creative form. News of Blackstar merely consolidated this.

Which is why the text I got that Monday morning from a colleague in Finland - already one hour ahead - saying "Sorry man" was so baffling. Sorry about what? After three consecutive days of playing the album non-stop, and even then not being able to catch up with all the reviews that appeared before Christmas, the very last thing I would have expected was for Bowie to be dead. "He can't be," I thought to myself. "He's just brought his new album out." My inner narrative was defiant: you don't write, record and release an album, and then die two days after it comes out.

Monday morning wore on. It was now headline news. Television, radio, online. People were already gathering to enshrine the Bowie mural on the side of Morleys department store on Tunstall Road in Brixton, a ten-minute walk from the house in Stansfield Road where the singer had been born, 69 years before. Mid-morning I received a text from my friend, the musician Steven Wilson, himself another huge fan. We discovered that we'd both received copies of The Laughing Gnome reissue in November 1973 for our birthdays, a week apart. Even more delightful was that they'd been bought as a job lot by my parents from Woolies in New Malden. Within a few days Steven paid his own tribute, adding a stunning, faithful cover of Space Odyssey to the set of his forthcoming Hamburg show. It would become a fitting tour staple.

However, as Steven and I exchanged messages, the enormity of Bowie's death still didn't sink in. I guess that's classic denial. I later blogged about it, of course, not so much in grief as trying to process it all. There was some backlash to such melodrama, the "snowflake" accusations of the cold-hearted who felt it necessary to shower discorn on the mass outpouring of what would be the first of so many celebrity deaths in 2016. Obviously, none of us were friends with Bowie, or related to him. But that glib dismissal of the "Diana-isation" of Bowie's death cruelly and ignorantly glossed over the power of art, of music, and indeed of Bowie's art and music.

He wasn't some mythic, messianic man of the people. That was why we was considered so cool. He wasn't one of us. For much of his career, he wasn't one of anything discernible. He was David Bowie. He may have been born in Brixton, growing up in the suburbia of Bromley, but as soon as David Robert Jones became David Bowie, and all permutations thereafter, he became a pop star unlike any of his peers. And that was the point. That was his point.

© Simon Poulter 2017

I am too young - well, I was too young - to have experienced Bowie the first time around, whether the tousle-haired, Newley/Brel-obsessed folkie, the supreme songsmith opening his 'classic' 1970s account with the remarkable Hunky Dory or commencing the first of his characterisations with Ziggy Stardust.

Even if I score some points for The Laughing Gnome being the first single I ever owned, I formally entered Bowiedom with Ashes To Ashes and its album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). And then, as so often was the case with Bowie, no sooner had he embraced, briefly, New Wave and the New Romantic eras, than he was shape-changing again with Let's Dance. Only later did I dive into his 1970s canon, discovering the most extraordinary body of work, and an incredible eight-year run of nine albums of original songs, plus the live albums (and the Pin Ups collection of covers).

There were - are - many ages of Bowie. The folkie, the progressive rock pioneer, the glam rocker, the soul boy, the Berlin lab experiment, the lost years of the late '80s and misguided attempts to embrace youth with drum'n'bass in the '90s, and then the second golden era, as a relaxed, contented Bowie emerged with Hours, Heathen and Reality. Indeed the latter spawned Bowie's final concert tour, and it was interesting to hear bassist Gail Ann Dorsey say in the BBC documentary how relaxed Bowie was on the Reality Tour. "He was funny - that was the real David Bowie".

It was not something I'd ever thought of about Bowie. Not that I thought him a po-faced automaton, but his characters and guises masked the Brixton boy beneath. After his death I poured over interviews with him on YouTube, and only then did I become mournful. Because throughout was the very antithesis of measured, PR-controlled rock legend, but the chuckling, jovial soul with a recognisable, self-depreciating south London sense of humour. He was, in interviews with Michael Parkinson, Jools Holland and Chris Evans, a Bowie I'd never previously considered, a Bowie you'd want to hang out with in the pub. All fans at some point yearn for personal contact with their heroes, but this sensation was different. It was final realisation that the Thin White Duke, the whey-faced Pierrot clown, Ziggy and all the others were simply costumes. That was when I realised that we'd lost someone unique and peerless. And that was also when I realised that it was OK to mourn. Because Bowie was more than just a pop star, more than a poster on the teenage bedroom wall. He'd been a part of my upbringing. And in that sense, he would be irreplaceable.

TV sofas - the politics of the left and the right

In our shallow, insecure times, people place great store in where they sit. It's something which has become increasingly felt at companies operating 'hot desking' policies, where workers no longer sit at the same place automatically, thus preventing desks from filling up with personal photographs, 'amusing' signs about not being mad to work there, and accumulated lunch detritus.

When it first began in - where else? - Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, hot desking wasn't perceived as a sign of disappearing job security. It was embraced as part of the zany, anything-goes, free-yourself-from-convention culture that went with all those skateboarding, surf shorts-wearing offices in California.

"That's my spot"

But when the practice spread to corporate offices in Europe, where notions of employment security have a very different texture, the idea of workers not expecting to have "their spot" each day came as a shock. Not knowing quite what the etiquette was, passive-agressive disputes broke out over computer mice or the adjustment of seat heights. But old habits die slowly, and even in offices with no allocated seating, people generally still plonk where they've always plonked...until some interloper appears to upset the peace.

In television, where you sit is important. In the Sky newsroom some years ago, there was a large and fairly uncompromising Kiwi by the name of Scott Chisholm, who co-presented evening news bulletins. Chisholm had his spot, and few seemed willing or brave enough to challenge it. There was something clearly of the animal kingdom about all this.

And thus it proved when another newsroom alpha, Chris Mann, appeared in that part of the Osterley safari park and had the temerity to use Chisholm's desk, possibly out of provocation. At some point afterwards - I can't now remember the exact chronology - Chisholm and Mann ended up in a clothed version of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed's wrestling match in Women In Love, resulting in Mann taking a trip to the Royal Free Hospital in north London. Trebles and sackings all round.

BBC

Hopefully, then, things won't end up quite so testosterone-fuelled on the set of BBC Breakfast, where the clean-cut vicar's son Dan Walker (he of Football Focus and not working on Sundays on religious grounds fame) has just replaced the retiring Bill Turnbull after 15 years on the famous red couch.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Walker was installed in Turnbull's old spot, on the right-hand side of the sofa - the 'camera left' position as the viewer sees it. This apparently caused viewer Adele Clarke great umbrage, and she wrote to Radio Times to complain that Breakfast producers were being horrendously sexist and that by rights, the longer-standing co-anchor Louise Minchin should now be automatically 'promoted' to the left of frame as the senior presenter.

In few other professions where you sit counts. A judge, obviously. A school headmaster, possibly. On an aircraft, the captain - and therefore commander - always sits in the left-hand seat. That IS a convention of authority. In all these cases, none are a matter of gender, either.

In the case of its flagship breakfast show, however, the BBC maintains that who-sits-where has nothing to do with seniority, but one of aesthetics. Breakfast producers apparently screen-tested Minchin in the camera left position and Walker camera right, but it just didn't work visually. That should be obvious: Walker is 6ft 6in and, as any photographer will tell you, putting that in the middle would just look weird - and if anything, would have made Walker even more prominent.

Chris Evans - a tall bloke himself, and who always sat camera-left to Gabby Roslin on The Big Breakfast - refutes the BBC's visual argument as "absolute tosh", but then I've never seen him sat anywhere else when there's a co-presenter to his side. Photographic composition has to count, even on a news programme, but that clearly hasn't been what this brouhaha has been about.

BBC

What Minchin herself thinks about it all is not fully clear. Tittle-tattle travels fast from wine bar to wine bar in medialand, though, and given the leaky-sieve nature of most newsrooms, it's no surprise that there are murmurings that she was pushing for the perceived prize spot on the Breakfast sofa, but then this is so far unsubstantiated. Frankly, though, until the subject came up in the Radio Times, I don't think anyone had thought less of her sitting to Walker's left, or any more of Walker sitting to her right.

That hasn't stopped a full-on media storm, of the kind only the media likes to create for its own amusement. In today's Guardian, Miriam O'Reilly - who sued the BBC for ageism after she was dropped as presenter of Countryfile - blamed "deep-rooted misogyny" in TV newsrooms for the left-right arrangement and the apparently unspoken rule that the senior presenter always sits on the left-hand side of the screen.

I agree that ageism is endemic in television, but then there are so many 'isms' in the entertainment business as a whole. Whether it's good roles for older women in Hollywood or that Bruce Forsyth was (until his departure) too old to host Strictly Come Dancing, there's always strong argument that such biases exist. The counter argument is always that television, like cinema, is a visual art, and therefore if it looks good, it probably is good. After all, did we ever get wound up by Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes sitting in that order on Blue Peter?

TV news journalists, however, do get annoyed by such things. They consider themselves serious journalists rather than light entertainers (though the editorial agenda of Breakfast sometimes says otherwise...). Authority counts perhaps as much as it does for the airline pilot. Positioning Minchin as the lead presenter of Breakfast is no bad thing. Few have raised the fact that Walker is younger than her, which means that she now has what looks like a lanky teenager in his first suit sat next to her. That should indicate seniority to begin with, but in television - as so many aspects of life - perception is nine-tenths of reality. Personally, until Ms. Clarke's letter came up, I - and I suspect most people - probably never gave it any thought. It's just two people on television, with a director, in the case of Breakfast, ensuring that his or her choice of shots is as visually appealing as they are editorially beneficial.

However, what this argument seems to forget is that television is also an aural medium, and none more so than breakfast news when viewers are only paying partial attention to what's on the screen. Who speaks, rather than where they sit is just as important. That's why awkward moments are so commonplace when two TV presenters can't decide who is going to read what on the Autocue. Perhaps, then, the real issue is deciding who gets to say "Good morning, you're watching BBC Breakfast with X and me, Y" than who has a hierarchical superiority based on where they sit.

In America, however, things are less subtle. As Anchorman's Ron Burgundy highlighted so brilliantly there are unbreakable formulas in television news. Visit any US city and watch the local evening bulletins: there will usually be the slightly older, seasoned male hack sat next to the younger, perfectly-coiffed hackette. I've probably never even noticed it, but the convention of man-left, woman-right is no doubt upheld pretty much everywhere. What you then get is the over-excitable "sports" guy to their right and a weather presenter clamped to their left. That is, surely, convention, but also perhaps one of familiarity (much like American supermarkets, whose layouts are always - to me at least - exactly the same).

TV producers are not stupid. In Los Angeles I often used to watch the frankly ridiculous 'zoo' madness of Fox's Good Day LA, a morning news show which seemed focused solely around its venerable anchor Steve Edwards. Either side of him, weather presenter Jillian Barberie and entertainment reporter Dorothy Lucey basically talked over each other. Producers presumably thought this gonzo coffee-and-cacophany format 'wacky'. All the viewer got was a silver-haired news veteran and two screeching blondes engaged in often incomprehensible banter. That's not a sexist comment - it was so obvious what was going on.

Back in the UK, Sky News, like its American cousins in the Murdoch empire, has never been short of criticism that its on-air talent is there more for aesthetic appeal (Adam Boulton not withstanding...) than news credibility. There's no doubt that Sky's presenter roster is blessed with what could be politely termed "visual appeal", but to its credit, there are also some very good journalists who front bulletins. Ever since it launched in 1989, Sky News has mainly operated a two-anchor approach and, yes, often with the male anchor to the left, but not always.

Sky

Sarah-Jane Mee - a very good anchor indeed - currently holds the 'primary' role on Sky News' Sunrise while Eamonn Holmes recovers from hip surgery (notably Gillian Joseph also takes taking the hot seat at weekends). Nobody seems to have an issue with any of these arrangements, and no one makes a big deal out of them - it's simply what works for Sky.

And, at no point has it been suggested that there is any inferiority to the whoever takes the co-presenter seat. That said, Holmes himself only underwent the surgery after putting it off for years fearing that he didn't want to be seen as "old" through television's notoriously youth-obsessed eyes (he's 55). That, back to O'Reilly's comments, is the bigger issue.

How you doin? A star in a reasonably priced motoring show

We are told that the 'new' series of Top Gear will be a disaster, before it has even launched. If we read the Daily Mail - and I encourage you not to - we hear that it has lurched from one calamity to another.

First, the Compo, Clegg and Foggy of motoring journalism - Hammond, May and Clarkson - took themselves off to Amazon Prime in the wake of 'Steakgate', and will continue their middle-aged mirth, "bantz" and casual racism/sexism/nameyourismhere-based automotive entertainment online.

Chris Evans was then named as the eventual new presenter of the BBC's lucrative programme-come-brand, prompting inevitable hrmphing about his suitability..or his likeability...or his knowledgeability. Amid gleeful rumours of things not going to plan in preparing for the show's return this May, it was announced before Christmas that executive producer Lisa Clark - an Evans cohort from his Big Breakfast days - was leaving the show after only a few months.

Since then, we've seen possible co-presenter David Coulthard take up a job with Channel 4 for its F1 coverage, with German racing driver Sabine Schmitz and unknown auto hack Chris Harris being described as poor replacements for the chemistry that the previous terrible trio developed during 12 years of "old-new" Top Gear. And then to cap it all we had pictures of Evans heaving up his guts after a spin in an Audi R8 while filming in California for the new series, with the BBC-loving Mail providing overt wink-winking that this is not up to Top Gear bloke standards (which the paper should know about, as it has spent long enough stalking Clarkson's every move...).

For those who have been almost willing new Top Gear to fail, the publicity so far has been manna from heaven. So, today, the BBC pulled a mastestroke by announcing that the first 'official' co-presenter will be Matt LeBlanc - Friends' Joey. Having appeared on old-new TG a couple of times, LeBlanc had properly demonstrated his petrolhead credentials, not to mention his ability to not get all actorly and take himself too seriously (a quality that netted him a Golden Globe for playing himself in the brilliant Episodes).

The masterstroke, though, is not simply the appointment of a suitable personality: Top Gear is one of the BBC's most valuable properties, and its old-new form, built up a global audience of 350 milllion viewers, a quite extraordinary feat in modern broadcasting, and a viewership any TV show would go to great lengths to protect.

Twitter/Matt LeBlanc

Hiring LeBlanc makes very good sense. For a start, he's as likeable as himself as he is in character. But from a business point of view, it makes even more sense - despite Friends ending 12 years ago, it remains ever-present on TV around the world, and is regularly mainlined during wet weekends via box sets and 24/7 Netflix availability.

Friends was, for what it's worth, one of the greatest sitcoms ever. Whatever claptrap gets spouted about its lack of ethnic or social diversity, few comedies on TV have ever boasted the same rate of gags-per-minute, which make it a joy to watch over and over again. And in LeBlanc and his on-screen relationship with Matthew Perry, a pairing as good as any comic partnership I've seen.

Unless he stinks the place up, LeBlanc will pull in the international audience the BBC needs. Already, his appointment has made headline news worldwide, with it even becoming the second lead story on CNN, behind the latest on the Democrat presidential nominations.While the other presenters are yet to be formally announced, with LeBlanc the BBC can calm the nerves of those in its distribution chain, who've been eagerly waiting Top Gear to return, and may have been spooked by some of the turbulance the new show has already encountered.

Whatever view you took of Clarkson, May and Hammond's antics, there's no denying that they created a phenomenally successful show, and set the bar extremely high, especially for a weekly "magazine", to use old-fashioned BBC language. Broadcast in its home country on BBC2, and seemingly targeted at the middle-aged men the presenting trio clearly reflected, it still drew a strong female following, not to mention being one of the few reasons anyone under 30 watched television at all. That is a powerful combination.

Bringing in an actor like LeBlanc, whose appeal crosses almost all ages and demographics (there can't be many people on the planet who haven't seen an episode of Friends), elevates the proposition, but obviously with it, expectations. We shall find out in May whether that expectation will be met.