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And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV

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And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV | Top Gear

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Read exclusive extracts from the new book from Richard Porter, TGTV script editor

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And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Read exclusive extracts from the new book from Richard Porter, TGTV script editor

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Read exclusive extracts from the new book from Richard Porter, TGTV script editor

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes history of Top Gear TV

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Read exclusive extracts from the new book from Richard Porter, TGTV script editor

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Richard Porter is the bearded reprobate behind the Sniff Petrol website, and some of the sillier corners of Top Gear magazine.

For 22 series and 175 shows, Richard was also the script editor for Top Gear TV, writing jokes and devising silly challenges for Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. And now he’s written a book about those 13 years of caravan-destroying, diplomatic-incident-sparking, redneck-angering television.

And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes story of how the self-professed ‘poky motoring show’ on BBC Two accidentally became a global phenomenon, from the faltering first pilot episode in 2002 right up to the, um, events of early 2015.

It is, as you’d expect, a rather decent read. And On That Bombshell can be bought, Richard tells us, in all good bookshops and several terrible ones. It’s also available as an eBook, which we believe is like a normal book but with 40 per cent added Yorkshire. You'll find And On That Bombshell in Kindle form here, and in iBooks form here.

To give you a taste of And On That Bombshell, we’ve liberally stolen a few extracts, having distracted Richard with a photo of an old Reliant Scimitar. Enjoy…

ON DESTROYING MORRIS MARINAS

In summer 2008, we set fire to a Morris Marina under the premise that we’d turned it into a brazier. I drove the Marina in question before it was torched and it was pretty dismal. So there was no great sadness when it became engulfed in flames.

Unfortunately the massed Marina lovers of Britain didn’t share this casual attitude to the destruction of their favourite car and wrote furious things about Top Gear on the internet and in letters to the office. Our response was, I’m not going to pretend otherwise, utterly childish.

In essence, we decided that if they were annoyed then the solution was to annoy them some more. Another Marina was bought, and then a piano was dropped on it. The Marinaists were incandescent with rage. So we did it again a while later. And then again.

Another Marina was bought, and then a piano was dropped on it

Leading lights in the Marina movement put out a stern warning to all fellow car enthusiasts to be extra careful when selling a car in case the buyer was a researcher from Top Gear. At some point during this puerile attempt to annoy Morris people we got an email from someone complaining about one of the pianos we’d dropped, saying it appeared to be quite a rare and interesting model. Perversely, we were quite mortified about this.

ON HOLLYWOOD CELEBS

When the programme started, getting proper Hollywood stars on the show was impossible. As a celeb, doing a normal chat show didn’t demand much effort. Turn up to a studio in London, receive a quick dab of make-up, do a bit of a chat on camera.

Or you could do Top Gear, in which case you’d have to be up at un-starry o’clock to be taken to a draughty airfield in the back end of Surrey where you would be welcomed into a foul smelling Portakabin and invited to try on a pre-used crash helmet then taken to a bleak taxiway, strapped into a medium-sized hatchback and shown the baffling, badly marked layout of a half-hearted race track by a man who never showed his face...

ON MONKEYS DRIVING CARS

My very favourite lost item was one from our in-house master of unexpected ideas, researcher Jim Wiseman. ‘I was wondering,’ he said one day. ‘Could a monkey drive a car?’ We all laughed. It’s a good question, we agreed, but don’t you think it might struggle with clutch control? Jim looked at us like we were daft.

‘No,’ he said slowly, as if this was bloody obvious. ‘It’ll be an automatic.’

We laughed some more, and it was agreed that this should definitely be on the show.

There aren't many monkey suppliers in the phone book

There aren’t many monkey suppliers in the phone book but there was a well-known monkey sanctuary place and they seemed to have monkeys coming out of their ears so Jim gave them a call. Strangely, they didn’t seem to share our enthusiasm for getting one of their inmates to drive a car. In fact, the lady on the phone seemed to take a dim view of the whole idea…

Copyright (c) Richard Porter, 2015. Extracted from AND ON THAT BOMBSHELL by Richard Porter published by Orion priced £20 in hardback and available as an audiobook and ebook

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Richard Porter is the bearded reprobate behind the Sniff Petrol website, and some of the sillier corners of Top Gear magazine.

For 22 series and 175 shows, Richard was also the script editor for Top Gear TV, writing jokes and devising silly challenges for Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. And now he’s written a book about those 13 years of caravan-destroying, diplomatic-incident-sparking, redneck-angering television.

And On That Bombshell is the behind-the-scenes story of how the self-professed ‘poky motoring show’ on BBC Two accidentally became a global phenomenon, from the faltering first pilot episode in 2002 right up to the, um, events of early 2015.

It is, as you’d expect, a rather decent read. And On That Bombshell can be bought, Richard tells us, in all good bookshops and several terrible ones. It’s also available as an eBook, which we believe is like a normal book but with 40 per cent added Yorkshire. You'll find And On That Bombshell in Kindle form here, and in iBooks form here.

To give you a taste of And On That Bombshell, we’ve liberally stolen a few extracts, having distracted Richard with a photo of an old Reliant Scimitar. Enjoy…

ON DESTROYING MORRIS MARINAS

In summer 2008, we set fire to a Morris Marina under the premise that we’d turned it into a brazier. I drove the Marina in question before it was torched and it was pretty dismal. So there was no great sadness when it became engulfed in flames.

Unfortunately the massed Marina lovers of Britain didn’t share this casual attitude to the destruction of their favourite car and wrote furious things about Top Gear on the internet and in letters to the office. Our response was, I’m not going to pretend otherwise, utterly childish.

In essence, we decided that if they were annoyed then the solution was to annoy them some more. Another Marina was bought, and then a piano was dropped on it. The Marinaists were incandescent with rage. So we did it again a while later. And then again.

Another Marina was bought, and then a piano was dropped on it

Leading lights in the Marina movement put out a stern warning to all fellow car enthusiasts to be extra careful when selling a car in case the buyer was a researcher from Top Gear. At some point during this puerile attempt to annoy Morris people we got an email from someone complaining about one of the pianos we’d dropped, saying it appeared to be quite a rare and interesting model. Perversely, we were quite mortified about this.

ON HOLLYWOOD CELEBS

When the programme started, getting proper Hollywood stars on the show was impossible. As a celeb, doing a normal chat show didn’t demand much effort. Turn up to a studio in London, receive a quick dab of make-up, do a bit of a chat on camera.

Or you could do Top Gear, in which case you’d have to be up at un-starry o’clock to be taken to a draughty airfield in the back end of Surrey where you would be welcomed into a foul smelling Portakabin and invited to try on a pre-used crash helmet then taken to a bleak taxiway, strapped into a medium-sized hatchback and shown the baffling, badly marked layout of a half-hearted race track by a man who never showed his face...

ON MONKEYS DRIVING CARS

My very favourite lost item was one from our in-house master of unexpected ideas, researcher Jim Wiseman. ‘I was wondering,’ he said one day. ‘Could a monkey drive a car?’ We all laughed. It’s a good question, we agreed, but don’t you think it might struggle with clutch control? Jim looked at us like we were daft.

‘No,’ he said slowly, as if this was bloody obvious. ‘It’ll be an automatic.’

We laughed some more, and it was agreed that this should definitely be on the show.

There aren't many monkey suppliers in the phone book

There aren’t many monkey suppliers in the phone book but there was a well-known monkey sanctuary place and they seemed to have monkeys coming out of their ears so Jim gave them a call. Strangely, they didn’t seem to share our enthusiasm for getting one of their inmates to drive a car. In fact, the lady on the phone seemed to take a dim view of the whole idea…

Copyright (c) Richard Porter, 2015. Extracted from AND ON THAT BOMBSHELL by Richard Porter published by Orion priced £20 in hardback and available as an audiobook and ebook

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Read exclusive extracts from the new book from Richard Porter, TGTV script editor