Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear. I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would.

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.

Extravagant is, I think, the word we all thought when we met ... A lot of money went into that [The Grand Tour's ]. I just thought it would be a good idea to have a bridge from the old to the new and that was a way of saying 'Right, well now look where we are.'

Biathletes need to eat 6.000 calories a day: six thousand! That's the equivalent of 2 pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 TWIX bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete!

If you go through the pearly gates backwards in a fireball, that's a cool way to die!

I'd just find a story in Canada and come and do it. Combine harvester banger - actually I've done that: banger racing up in Red Deer [in Alberta, for his 1998 doc series Extreme Machines].

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding.