Jeremy Clarkson Says He Quit ‘The Grand Tour’ After Running Out Of Ideas & Becoming “Unfit, Fat & Old”

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed why it’s the end of the road for The Grand Tour.

Clarkson said he and co-hosts, James May and Richard Hammond, decided to quit the Amazon Prime Video show after running out of steam.

In an interview with The Times of London, Clarkson said it was becoming increasingly difficult to conjure up outlandish adventures for the show and that the presenters were all showing their age.

Clarkson, who is 63, said: “I’ve driven cars higher than anyone else and further north than anyone else. We’ve done everything you can do with a car. When we had meetings about what to do next, people just threw their arms in the air.”

He added that The Grand Tour missions are “immensely physical” and had become increasingly difficult when “you’re unfit and fat and old.” “If you’re Bear Grylls you go to a hotel — there aren’t any hotels in the Sahara desert,” Clarkson said.

Clarkson, Hammond, and May confirmed last November that they had filmed their final installments of The Grand Tour. Two final episodes of the motoring series were recorded in Mauritania and Zimbabwe and will premiere on Amazon Prime Video.

Fozia Khan, Amazon Studios’ head of unscripted in the UK, said the brand could survive with another set of presenters. “It’s come to its natural end,” she said, adding that her team was “thinking about” how the show can live on.

Clarkson will continue to host Clarkson’s Farm for Amazon after the series has become the streamer’s highest-rated UK original. Filming on Season 4 is set to begin this year. Clarkson is also hosting more Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? for ITV.

The Times interviewer Ed Potton wrote that he was told not to ask Clarkson about his reviled The Sun newspaper column about Meghan Markle. Clarkson wrote that he imagines the day Markle is paraded “naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” The piece was retracted and Amazon made clear its fury at the article.

Asked if he feels under pressure to be controversial, Clarkson said: “No! I like being controversial. Some people who see a still pond find that peaceful, but I cannot resist throwing a stone in it.”