James May

“I don't play a lot of games. I play flight simulators, mostly.”

“I can't make a house homely. My house just looks like a garage or a shed. I'm not untidy, but it just looks so uninviting.”

“There's a great deal of poetry in working out how things work, cutting bits of metal, trying to mend stuff.”

“I do worry about breaking things - things that don't belong to me.”

“I don't know what a gazillion is.”

“I can't see Jeremy Clarkson having very many serious problems in his working life in the long run.”

“There's a lot of politics in television and a lot of in-fighting and all that sort of stuff, but in the end, we are purveyors of entertainment. Viewers are not really bogged down in who's doing what and who hates who and who's doing best in the ratings. They watch television to be entertained.”

“The shirt thing just started one day when I bought one with a really interesting pattern, and people laughed at it, so I thought, 'I'll keep buying daft shirts with flowers on.'”

“I don't want Jeremy Clarkson anywhere near my shed or my toolbox or my piano. He's interested in fashionable restaurants and celebrity gossip - I'm not interested in those.”

“I've never wanted to be on television for the sake of it, I suppose because I'm not one of life's natural presenters; I'm not an actor.”

“I'm conflicted because I like being in deserts. I find them sort of cleansing, but there's another part of me that hates dust. And I particularly hate dust in cars, so it's a huge conflict going on there.”

“I always wanted to be a teacher.”

“When it comes to watches, it's ironic that you can spend thousands on an exquisitely made mechanical watch, and yet it will be less accurate than a five-quid digital bought from a petrol station.”

“If it were possible - and I hope it will be some day - I'd like some sort of anti-gravity travel capsule: some way to travel around the without the need for jets and wings and so on.”

“It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.”

“Jeremy Clarkson wants to become a farmer - he's bought a field - Hammond wants to open a supermarket, and I'd like to spend my days owning a shoe shop.”

“Our 'Top Gear' characters are based on our own characters, if exaggerated and cartoonified. We try not to be completely different to who we are, because you couldn't carry it off in the long run.”

“The V50 is a genuinely great car, even as a diesel.”

“I always said it was a privilege to end up on the television. It wasn't my ambition; I fell into editing magazines and writing about cars, and then I ended up on the telly.”

“I think the astute viewer can recognise I am the proper bloke, because I have a toolbox and can put things back together, and I can quote W. B. Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson.”