During his time on The Grand Tour, James May has driven a beach buggy across Namibia, piloted an 80-year-old boat down the Mekong delta and commuted through the Columbian mountains in a Fiat Panda.

Advertisement

So it isn't perhaps a shock to hear that the 56-year-old presenter might be stepping down from the Amazon Prime Video series.

May recently said he's "falling apart" and points out that co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson will be 60 "any day now".

"How do I feel about ageing? Bad. I’m in the second half of my fifties now and in all honesty, I’m slightly falling apart," May wrote in The Sun.

“I’m developing nervous disorders and aches and I don’t think I’ll do this much longer because I don’t want to fall apart in public.

“It would just be a bit undignified and I don’t think people want to see it.”

May continued: "When it takes us 15 minutes to get out of a Ferrari, do you really want to see that? It’s sad. You’re supposed to leave the audience wanting more.

“We never thought we’d be doing it this long – and we never really thought about how it would end.”

May's departure would certainly be the end of an era, as he has been hosting motoring antics with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond for over 15 years. May joined Clarkson and Hammond as a Top Gear presenter all the way back in 2003, and jumped ship to Amazon with his fellow petrolheads when they launched The Grand Tour in 2016.

The trio were most recently seen in the Seamen special of The Grand Tour, which saw the three presenters travel through Cambodia and Vietnam on boats and featured May struggling with his 1930s wooden river cruiser.

Fans shouldn't panic just yet, however: May will appear in at least two more feature-length specials for season four of The Grand Tour, which are due to arrive next year.

Advertisement

The Grand Tour: Seamen is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video

Authors

Daniel FurnJournalist
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement