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Your Clarkson needs you
This has gone down very badly with the people in internet land. After every show, they dived into their forums and moaned like Nigel Mansell stuck in a jet engine that their beloved car show had become an entertainment show for the terminally childish. They're right too.
Perhaps we should have changed the name to Last of the Summer Petrol. All these people want to know why there aren't two or three proper car tests a week. And not car tests where I drive around shouting "poweeeeer", but proper ones done by James where every nut, bolt and torque is taken out and examined.
What they want, secretly, is Chris Goffey back. And I'd love to oblige. I'd love to spend the day hooning around in a 599 or a lightweight Gallardo.
I'd love to make those cars live for you on the screen. It'd be great. I'd even love to take that little Fiat Panda 100hp for a spin and wonder out loud how many Nurofens you'd need to take before the headache it generated went away.
'We thought the viewing figures would tail off when people realised the Hamster wasn't going to suddenly fall to the floor and start dribbling. They haven't'
And whether that many Nurofens will actually kill you. But galloping like a huge, shit-stained horse over the horizon comes the problem: is that what the vast majority of the viewers want? Not you. Not your mates in cyberland.
But the vast swathe of people who just want to flop down on a Sunday night and watch entertaining telly. I suspect the answer is a Thatcheresque "No. No. No."
We always knew that when Richard Hammond made his triumphant return to the programme, the viewing figures would be enormous. And they were. We even beat the final of Big Brother into a cocked pig.
And then we sort of thought they'd tail off again, when people realised the Hamster wasn't going to suddenly fall to the floor and start dribbling.
But they haven't. Apart from a slight blip for the America special, the figures climbed like an F-15 on combat power, until we finished with 8.6 million people watching the end of the final show.
To put that in perspective, it's pretty much twice what a very successful programme could dream of getting on BBC2 or Channel 4. It puts us on level terms with Eastenders.
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