Литагент HarperCollins - The Grand Tour Guide to the World

The purpose of the Grand Tour was not only to educate and inform, it was also to generate entertainment, ideally about 12 to 13 hours of it. Having achieved this in a single year, the friends might then agree to do it again the following year but in different places, and perhaps the slow, slightly boring one would say, ‘I’d like to be the fast one who shouts for a change,’ and his friends would say, ‘Shhh, James. Don’t spoil it.’

PIT STOP 01

USA

a.k.a.

GOLDEN STATE

Former Governors of California include Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. By 2022, Californians expect to welcome Governor Kardashian.

Population:

39 MILLION

If California were a country, it would have the sixth-largest economy in the world. If California were a country it would also, like, ohmyGurrrd, have way cooler bank notes and stuff.

THE OFFICIAL STATE SLOGAN IS, ‘OH, LIKE, WOW, HAVE YOU LOST WEIGHT?’

California produces most of America’s peaches, dates, avocados and insincerity.

Currency:

US DOLLAR

California has been immortalised in film many times with movies such as L.A. Story, L.A. Confidential, Beverly Hills Cop and Miss Marple Goes to Compton.

Famous people:

EVERYONE

Northern California is home to Silicon Valley whereas Southern California is home to silicon mountains.

Capital:

SACRAMENTO. NOT LA. DON’T SAY LA. IT’S NOT LA. OR SAN FRANCISCO.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Hundreds of cars, thousands of people, a legendary band, and three old men in shirts. That’s what made up the big opening for the first series of The Grand Tour. Oh, and months and months of planning. Sometimes, even this show plans stuff.

The Breitling Jet Team making one of three passes over the stage. Looked simple, actually required the main road in the background to be closed. To the right, this is James’s ‘Ooh, I’ve seen a plane’ face.

The specially made sign of fire for what Jeremy christened the ‘Burning Van’ festival. Because what you need in the desert are more hot things.

Yes, that’s a Merlin aircraft engine in a vintage Rolls-Royce. As you can see, it’s pure May bait.

Looks like a hellish vision from an apocalyptic near-future. Actually built by a bunch of bright, articulate and super-polite engineers. So maybe the apocalyptic future won’t be so bad.

The audience get excited. Apart from that bloke with the beard and sunglasses.

Before filming starts, Jeremy gets inexorably drawn towards a man with a massive V8.

A rat-rod truck behind a fleet of new cars. The up-to-date stuff was sourced direct from manufacturers.

Our triumphant trio get up on stage in front of the crowd for the first time. An insults contest broke out shortly afterwards, much of which had to be edited out of the final show.

A dragon with a petrol engine. Obviously. Much of this stuff usually stars at the Burning Man festival.

Clarkson spots The Grand Tour photographer, May does some light flamenco.

LESSER-KNOWN SONGS ABOUT

The Golden State has inspired a great many musicians over the years. Here are some California-themed songs that you might not have heard of.

THE GRANDEST OF OPENINGS

IN JEREMY’S HEAD (PHONES)

The very first sequence of The Grand Tour episode 1 might well be one of the most enormous opening scenes ever attempted by a television show.

Yet the origins of this massive spectacle came from a very small place, which was the music player on Jeremy’s phone. Normally this is a dark and unsettling place full of rock dinosaurs and 19-hour flute solos but in this case it yielded gold.

Clarkson had been wrestling with how we should announce the arrival of the new show until the moment he clicked upon Hothouse Flowers’ version of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’. From there the whole narrative – leaving London in the rain, arriving in sunny LA to a bright new beginning, a drive through the desert, the gathering up of a huge flotilla of vehicles, the arrival at a massive cars and music festival – flowed from his mind, as a fully formed and inspired thought. Having a thought is one thing, however. Making it all a reality wasn’t so easy. Organising all the cars that would make up the amazing Mad Max cavalcade took several months of work inside a ‘war room’ at GT HQ in London, its walls covered in pictures, maps and diagrams. And it wasn’t just the cars themselves; it was finding people who could drive them, and who could be schooled in the discipline of holding position while camera cars and filming helicopters swirled around them in a thick pall of dust.

The presenters themselves would be in a trio of supercars, starting with Jeremy in the new Ford GT. But when that car wasn’t available in time the team hatched a plan B involving three tuned Mustangs. Well, we were in America.

Then there was finding a desert location for the ‘festival’. A suitable spot was found and all the relevant permissions granted, only for it to become clear that even this vast tract of land wasn’t big enough to secure decent shots of the entire flotilla blasting across the landscape. So what you see in the final cut is the convoy driving across two different desert locations, stitched together by TV magic so that they appear seamlessly to pull up to the stage and the crowd around it.

Getting the timing right for this last segment wasn’t easy either. In one smooth movement the convoy had to come to a halt while Jeremy, Richard and James continued through the crowd in their Mustangs, got out and walked up onto the stage just as Hothouse Flowers wrapped up their song. Get it wrong, and the whole sequence would need a time-consuming re-set of cars, cameras and people.

To add another layer to the mix, the show got wind that the Breitling Jet Display team were at an air show down the road and asked if they’d mind popping over for a fly-past. Or rather three fly-pasts, since this gave more opportunities to get the shots.

Over 200 people were involved in the filming of that day, not including the vast and heroically upbeat audience who stood in the heat all afternoon, whooping and cheering long after their voices had gone hoarse.