Jeremy Clarkson has admitted that being dropped from Top Gear was his “own silly fault” and said that he would be open to returning to the BBC.
Clarkson, who left the hit BBC2 show after a fracas with a Top Gear producer, said that not having Top Gear had left a “big hole that needs to be filled”.
“I was very sad, it was my own silly fault so I could hardly complain,” he said, speaking on Chris Evans’s BBC2 Radio breakfast show.
“I was at the BBC for 27 years, and on the current incarnation for 12. It was very much my baby, I absolutely adored it, I worked all through the night and paid attention to every tiny bit and then suddenly you are not asked to do that any more. You feel that there is a big hole that needs to be filled.”
Evans then said that while his co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond still have a “door open” to work at the BBC, to which Clarkson said: “Well so can I. I’m not sacked, remember.”
Clarkson dodged questions about how seriously he was in discussions about new TV projects, after reports of meetings with Netflix and ITV.
“No, I haven’t had a single meeting,” he said. “I’ve just been listening.”
When pressed on the what “listening” meant, Clarkson said: “On the telephone or video conferencing. I have absolutely no idea [what’s next].
“It was very sudden [leaving Top Gear]. You’d be a fool to just jump into something. You need to look at what’s out there and what is the best thing to do.
“I was at the BBC for 27 years. You emerge and find the world has changed and you have to find out how the world works, which is what I have been doing.”
Despite his string of run-ins with BBC management over the years, Clarkson said that he loved the corporation and would miss it as much as he did working on Top Gear.
“I like the BBC,” he said. “There are some dreadful people in it but there are also some really talented and brilliant people. It is a great organisation [and] I’ll never complain about it. I thank them for giving me such a long time there.”
He also gave listeners a preview of the content of the last three episodes of Top Gear, saying they “weren’t the strongest films [but] they weren’t bad”.
The final episodes of the last series were postponed following Clarkson’s fracas incident as they could not be completed, but the BBC has pledged that they will be broadcast.
Clarkson said that one of the episodes involved the team buying “very, very cheap 4x4s, a couple of hundred pounds, not thousands”. Another involved going on a “traditional classic cars enthusiast weekend”.
He said: “They do belong to the licence fee payer, so you should get to see them if that is what you want. For those of you that do like [Top Gear] there will be one last hurrah.”
