James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963)[1] is an English television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a co-presenter, alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, of the motoring programme Top Gear from 2003 until 2015 and the television series The Grand Tour for Amazon Prime Video from 2016 to 2024. He also served as a director of the production company W. Chump & Sons.[2]
May has presented other programmes on themes including travel, science & technology, toys, wine culture, and the plight of manliness in modern times. He wrote a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph's motoring section from 2003 to 2011.
May studied music at Pendle College, Lancaster University, where he learned to play the flute and piano; he also spent a year studying metalwork at a technical college.[5][6][7] After graduating, May briefly worked at a hospital in Chelsea as a records officer and had a short stint in the civil service before taking up journalism and broadcasting in his thirties.[8] He also held a part-time job as a moulder at the foundry his father was employed at and suggested in a 2017 interview with The Times that this formed his interest in mechanics.[9]
Journalism career
During the early 1980s, May worked as a sub-editor for The Engineer and later Autocar magazine, from which he was dismissed for performing a prank.[10] He has since written for several publications, including the regular column England Made Me in Car Magazine, articles for Top Gear magazine, and a weekly column in The Daily Telegraph.
He has written the book May on Motors (2006), which is a collection of his published articles, and co-authored Oz and James's Big Wine Adventure (2006), based on the TV series of the same name. He wrote the afterword to Long Lane with Turnings, published in September 2006, the final book by motoring writer L. J. K. Setright. In the same month, he co-presented a tribute to Raymond Baxter. Notes From The Hard Shoulder and James May's 20th Century, a book to accompany the television series of the same name, were published in 2007.
Dismissal from Autocar
James May's hidden message
In an interview with Richard Allinson on BBC Radio 2,[11] May confessed that in 1992 he was dismissed from Autocar magazine after putting together an acrostic in one issue. At the end of the year, the magazine's "Road Test Yearbook" supplement was published. Each spread featured four reviews and each review started with a large red letter (known in typography as an initial or a drop cap). May's role was to put the entire supplement together.
To alleviate the tedium, May wrote each review such that the initials on the first four spreads read "ROAD", "TEST", "YEAR" and "BOOK". Subsequent spreads seemingly had random letters, starting with "SOYO" and "UTHI"; when punctuated, these letters spelt out the message: "So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse."[12]
In a 2019 interview with Carscoops.com, May stated that while the hidden message originally passed through the magazine's pre-printing review processes unnoticed, he was found out when readers began calling in to Autocar's offices, thinking there might be a prize involved. Upon learning of this, the magazine's management called for May to be fired.[13]
May was briefly a co-presenter of the original Top Gear series in 1999. During an interview in 2020, Jeremy Clarkson claimed that the show's original producers had decided to replace him with May in 1999, though they felt dissatisfied with May as he was soon fired in 2000, shortly before the entire program was cancelled the following year.[20] Following the first season of the show's relaunch in 2002, Clarkson managed to convince Andrew Wilman to rehire him to replace Jason Dawe.[21] He first co-presented the revived series of Top Gear in its second series in 2003,[22] where he earned the nickname "Captain Slow" owing to his careful driving style, and his OCD-like obsessions with order.[12][23] Despite this sobriquet, he has done some especially high-speed driving – in the 2007 series, he took a Bugatti Veyron to its top speed of 253 mph (407 km/h), then in 2010 he achieved 259.11 mph (417 km/h) in the Veyron's newer 16.4 Super Sport edition.[24] In an earlier episode he also tested the original version of the Bugatti Veyron against the Pagani Zonda F.
May, along with co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson and an Icelandic support crew, travelled by car to the magnetic North Pole in 2007, using a modified Toyota Hilux.[25][26] In the words of Clarkson, he was the first person to go there "who didn't want to be there". He also drove a modified Toyota Hilux up the side of the erupting volcano Eyjafjallajökull.[27]
Following the BBC's decision not to renew Jeremy Clarkson's contract with the show on 25 March 2015,[28] May stated in April 2015 that he would not continue to present Top Gear as part of a new line-up of presenters.[29]
Science
May presented Inside Killer Sharks, a documentary for Sky, and James May's 20th Century, investigating inventions.[30] He flew in a Royal Air ForceEurofighter Typhoon at a speed of around 1320 mph (2124 km/h) for his television programme, James May's 20th Century. In late 2008, the BBC broadcast James May's Big Ideas, a three-part series in which May travelled around the globe in search of implementations for concepts widely considered science fiction.[31] He also presented James May's Man Lab from 2010–2013. In 2013, May narrated To Space & Back, a documentary on the influence of developments in space exploration on modern technology produced by Sky-Skan and The Franklin Institute.[32]
James May on the Moon (BBC 2, 2009) commemorated 40 years since man first landed on the Moon.[33] This was followed by another documentary on BBC Four called James May at the Edge of Space, where May was flown to the stratosphere (70,000 ft) in a US Air ForceLockheed U-2 spy plane. Highlights of the footage from the training for the flight, and the flight itself was used in James May on the Moon, but was shown fully in this programme.[34] This made him one of the highest flying people, along with the pilot, at that time, after the crew of the International Space Station.[34]
Beginning in October 2009, May presented a six-part TV series showing favourite toys of the past era and whether they can be applied in the modern-day. The toys featured were Airfix, Plasticine, Meccano, Scalextric, Lego and Hornby. In each show, May attempts to take each toy to its limits, also fulfilling several of his boyhood dreams in the process. In August 2009, May built a full-sized house out of Lego at Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey.[35] Plans for Legoland to move it to their theme park fell through in September 2009 because costs to deconstruct, move and then rebuild were too high;[36] despite a final Facebook appeal for someone to take it, it was demolished on 22 September, with the plastic bricks planned to be donated to charity.[37]
Also for the series, he recreated the banked track at Brooklands using Scalextric track,[38] and an attempt at the world's longest working model railway along the Tarka Trail between Barnstaple and Bideford in North Devon, although the attempt was foiled due to parts of the track being stolen and vandals placing coins on the track, causing a short circuit.[39] Later, in 2011, May tried for the record again, proposing a race between German model railroad enthusiasts and their British counterparts. The two teams would start at opposite ends along double tracked mainline. This time, the effort succeeded with both teams successfully running three trains the entire route.[40]
A special Christmas Episode called Flight Club, aired in December 2012. In this special, James and his team built a huge toy glider that flew 22 miles (35 km) from Devon to the island of Lundy.[41]
In 2013, May created a life-size, fully functional motorcycle and sidecar made entirely out of the construction toy Meccano. Joined by Oz Clarke, he then completed a full lap of the Isle of Man TT Course, a full 37+3⁄4 mile-long circuit.
In late 2006, the BBC broadcast Oz and James's Big Wine Adventure, a series in which May, a committed bitter drinker, travelled around France with wine expert Oz Clarke.[42] A second series was broadcast in late 2007, this time with May and Clarke in the Californian wine country,[43] and was followed by a third series in 2009 called Oz and James Drink to Britain.
In January 2020, May hosted a travel documentary named James May: Our Man in Japan, the 6-episode series was released on Amazon Prime Video and follows May's journey from the north end of Japan to its south. Over the course of three months, May explores and participate in many activities to truly understand the country which has intrigued him for a long time.[44] During the trip through major cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, he is accompanied by a cast of different guides and translators.
A second series, James May: Our Man in Italy, is a travel documentary with May on a journey throughout the regions of Italy from Palermo to the Dolomites on a trip exploring the culture, food, and more.[45]
A third series, James May: Our Man in India, is another travel documentary with James May on a journey throughout the country of India.[46] In October 2024, May confirmed the series was cancelled.[47]
Internet presence
May in 2010
May created Head Squeeze[48] (now renamed "BBC Earth Lab"; May no longer features as a presenter). The channel is a mix of science, technology, history and current affairs. The first video was published in December 2012. Videos are produced by 360 Production[49] for BBC Worldwide.
May created his own YouTube channel, titled "JM's Unemployment Tube", in 2015 after Top Gear was postponed by the BBC following Jeremy Clarkson's dismissal. Mainly featuring cooking videos filmed from his kitchen, as well as mock builds of Airfix models, the channel has over 230,000 subscribers as of March 2021.[50]
In 2016, May launched, with his former Top Gear presenters, a social network for motoring fans called DriveTribe.[51]
In 2019, May moved on to created videos on a Drivetribe spin-off brand Foodtribe (replacing JM's Unemployment Tube) frequently using a small, bedsit-like kitchen setup called "The Bug-out Bunker".[52] The channel has since been rebranded as "What Next?"[53]
May became an Internet meme when one of his Foodtribe videos went viral. In it, while preparing to make two cheese sandwiches, May bluntly uttered the word "cheese" after placing a block of Red Leicester on a table.[54] The quote went viral, and was used in various memes and image macros.
Personal life
May lives in Hammersmith, West London, with art critic Sarah Frater, with whom he has been in a relationship since 2000.[55] In July 2010, May was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lancaster University, where he had previously studied music.[56] He holds a Doctor of Letters degree.[57]
In August 2014, May was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote against independence from the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[58]
In 2020, May bought half the ownership of a pub in Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire called The Royal Oak,[60] which dates from the early 18th century and is a Grade II listed historic site.[61]
^James May (10 November 2007). "Frocks make a boy a man". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 14 November 2007. Retrieved 31 December 2007.
^"Interview with Gordon Ramsay on the 'F' Word @ Unreality Primetime". Archived from the original on 14 November 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2010. "The worst ever would have to be James May, with his fish pie. Even though he won, which was extraordinary. He was drinking a bottle of red wine throughout the challenge, so I thought it was in the bag."
^[1] "This recipe is Gordon's version of a posh fish pie originally made by James May."
^Williams, David (21 January 2010). "Copy Top Gear's polar trip". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
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