A lot of people ask how we film these races, and whether they're fixed. Well, let me say here and now, in print, they're not. I follow a Range Rover tracking car, and we really don't pull over for anything except fuel.

In the drive to Oslo, the camera man spent 24 hours in the boot and had to relieve himself in a bottle because there was no time to stop.

Meanwhile, James and Richard are doing all they can to beat me. We take it very seriously.

But not half as seriously as the director who, when the race is over, has to retrace our steps, adding to the miles of tracking shots he took in the race, with many more miles of arty 'ups and passes'. This usually takes three days. And then he edits the film.

And to edit the 32-minute Bugatti race took a staggering 33 sixteen-hour days. That's not even a minute a day, and no one spends that much time (or money) on a commercial.

It's the main reason why Top Gear doesn't look like any other show on television. Because everyone on it works so bloody hard. And because we have the best production manager in the whole of the BBC.

We also have the best executive producer. Unlike most executive producers who are paid to have a lot of lunch, Andy Wilman spends all day in the office, swearing at anyone who walks past, and then when everyone's gone home, he goes to the edit suite in central London to swear at everyone there. In the last run, he never got home before one in the morning.

He's so busy, in fact, that he doesn't even stare at Sophia and Rachel all that much. Then he announced he was firing everyone in the office who was a first-born child, "to keep the faith".

Eventually, all the films are made, and edited, and normally everyone would go home to relax. But on Top Gear, we then go into production.

We record on a Wednesday in the old hangar where they used to paint Harrier Jump Jets and that means on a Tuesday, the presenters have to rock up at the office.

Richard spends the day flossing or talking to his dentist, James looks at Rachel a bit, and then looks at the prices of old motorcycles on eBay, but I have to write the show and prepare the guest interview.