James May Shares Frightening Encounter During The Grand Tour Scotland Special
Amazon Prime’s executives are a bit mum about the new The Grand Tour special but the show’s executive producer Andy Wilman disclosed how their Coronavirus special transpired.
Wilman shared:
“We were trying to think of different options, and where we ended up was we just shot one recently up in Scotland, a kind of mini coronavirus special, which will be 60-odd minutes rather than 90.”
The shortened episode, which will premiere in 2021, began shooting in Scotland last September.
Hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May arrived in Edinburgh in three popular American vehicles, with Clarkson in the blue Lincoln, May in the red Cadillac, and Hammond in the green Buick. The trio is reportedly seen finishing a drag race somewhere south of Scotland.
After a top speed stint in their cars with a sketchy brake, the trio went to the garage to modify their drives once again for the next race.
As for their modifications, May is equipped with side exhausts while Clarkson’s Lincoln is geared with pull tires.
At the Atholl Palace Hotel in Pitlochry, the trio traded in high momentum driving for a caravan tow before converting their vehicles to three entirely separate American engines.
On a pit stop at the Hebrides, Clarkson shared on his Instagram page the struggles he is experiencing with picking a COVID safe dining on-set and eating a piece of bacon with a plastic fork that broke.
He told the Instagram video: “I broke that fork on my small piece of bacon, then I broke this one, so this time, very gently … it is the last fork.”
And he erupted into laughter when the plastic cutlery broke, leaving his bacon and two eggs whole.
The COVID safe episode is scheduled to air in the weeks after The Grand Tour Presents: A Massive Hunt which is filmed in Madagascar.
The A Massive Hunt, which is slated to be released on Friday, December 18, sets the trio out in Madagascar for an adventure through the tough roads of East Africa in quest of pirate gold.
May talked to BBC about the future of the show during the promotion of The Grand Tour’s COVID special:
“I am aware of ageing, and perhaps the need to grow up, now I’m in the second half of my 50s.
But I think we’ll do it for a bit yet because, to be honest, people want us to, and it would be wrong of us to disappoint them.
But eventually one of us is going to snap, yes. Probably me. I’m quite fragile, really.”
May remembered the frightening moment he, his co-hosts, and the show staff saw a woman passing through a remote village with her hands tied with wooden stocks.
In defense of why he and the team did not intervene with what they have witnessed, May explained “no one could give them context” as to why the woman was being punished. The method of punishment has been prohibited in the UK since the 18th century.
“That was disturbing. Nobody we were with could explain to us what that was. It didn’t seem to be a stunt or a carnival ritual or any of those sorts of things, it did actually genuinely seem to be a woman in some sort of stocks,” May claimed.
