James May
'Top Gear''s popularity is a complete mystery to me. Maybe it's because it's still a car programme, but it's turned into a distorted world view from three men; a world view through the windscreen.Collection: Car
The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. It empowers the human machine, and with no input beyond perhaps a trendy isotonic health drink in a brightly coloured bottle at an inflated price.Collection: Health
A car isn't a classic just because it's old. To be a classic, a car has to tell us something of its time.Collection: Car
I think any carmaker that had a brain and was looking very long-term would think about 'Personalised Transport Solutions' - which may not be a car.Collection: Car
There's a great deal of poetry in working out how things work, cutting bits of metal, trying to mend stuff.Collection: Poetry
Jeremy can't do anything. I've never discovered anything he can do. I mean, he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn't be able to light a fire.Collection: Car
In 1988, before I'd written a word for a car magazine or stood in front of a camera, I was a subeditor on 'The Engineer.'Collection: Car
I'm a big user of digital technology, but I don't find it beautiful.Collection: Technology
The V50 is a genuinely great car, even as a diesel.Collection: Car
Someone once told me that I was 12 inside. The only thing 12-year-olds crave is more Lego. Lego is fun; it's therapeutic. It's a beautiful sensation when you click the pieces together.
I've never quite trusted water; I don't think it's entirely healthy.
I woke up one morning and realised that one of the problems with being a middle-aged man - of being a man in general - is the tyranny of fashion.
Me, I'm a lesbian: I find women fascinating.
I'm not beholden to anyone. I'm not waiting for a pension or a carriage clock.
I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.
I'm not very ambitious, sorry... I don't get up and think, 'Today, I shall achieve greatness.' It's more, 'Today I might have Marmite on my toast.'
If you are a man, I feel that practicality should always trump fashion.
The decline of practical skills, some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying. They can't put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt. They believe it's endearing and cute to be useless, whereas I think it's boring, and everyone's getting sick of it.
I felt that needed to be addressed: the idea that anything a man tries to do properly or thoroughly is dismissed as either metrosexual or OCD. But why can't you be practical and artistic at the same time, which was considered perfectly normal in the Renaissance?
Justice should not admit a public's thirst for pure revenge.
Deep down inside, I am lazy.
The greatest luxury now in being reasonably well-off - overlooking the Ferrari and the aeroplane - is that I can always go for a curry without worrying if I can afford it.
I think there are bigger problems in the world than Jeremy Clarkson.
Modern man is in crisis. He has degenerated from the redoubtable pillar he became through centuries of refinement and slipped resignedly into the popular depiction of himself as a witless under-achiever, incapable of looking after himself or those around him.
I'm a great believer in the principle of try it and work it out. If a gadget is designed well, you can easily work out how to use it. But if you can't, it isn't shameful to read the instructions.
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.
I remember thinking, at the end of 2015 on New Year's Eve, I'm actually quite glad to see the back of that one. 2015 was a bit complicated and had some very traumatic bits in it.
I'm in favour of the old roles being blurred. The old division at school where the boys did metalwork and woodwork and the girls did needlework and domestic science is awful, really - and I'm glad it's gone.
There are very few things in real life on which I agree with Jeremy Clarkson, surprisingly few for people who have to make a TV show together. But that's part of what makes it work.
I've got a new pair of trainers. That's the only difference in my life since I started working for Amazon.
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 Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.
I was a car journalist when I started on 'Top Gear.' It was all about cars. And then it all spun out of all control, and we turned into figures of ridicule to keep the viewers happy. It's a fair deal, I suppose.
I don't know what a gazillion is.
A lot of television assumes the viewer is a bit daft, and I don't think they are.
It's healthy to have two car shows. Why not? The viewer gets twice as much car show to watch.
When I get into a car - any car - I still find it amazing that I'm allowed to drive it away.
Watching people move to nice music is very pleasant.
I do worry about breaking things - things that don't belong to me.
I don't play a lot of games. I play flight simulators, mostly.
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.
They're pretty accurate, the clocks in mobile phones.
Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I've never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I'm paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I'm really paid quite well for it. So I'm not complaining.
I don't have any quarrel with the BBC.
I'd quite like to film in Central Park. I think we have asked, but we're not allowed to.
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 got into it just thinking, 'Oh, television, maybe I'll have a go at that.' I could've never imagined that it would get to this.
In 'Top Gear,' everything goes wrong because you have Jeremy Clarkson, so any practical activity ends in a pile of bits.
All cars have a natural gait, a speed at which they're happiest. The Corniche is perfect at around 65-70mph. I did a ton in it once, which was completely horrible. Apparently, it'll reach 120mph, but not with me in it.
There's this perception that I've got this huge collection of old cars. I don't.