Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by James May - Page 2

'Normal bloke' is my style.

I can't make a house homely. My house just looks like a garage or a shed. I'm not untidy, but it just looks so uninviting.

Our 'Top Gear' characters are based on our own characters, if exaggerated and cartoonified. We try not to be completely different to who we are, because you couldn't carry it off in the long run.

If it were possible - and I hope it will be some day - I'd like some sort of anti-gravity travel capsule: some way to travel around the without the need for jets and wings and so on.

'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.

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 always found it hard to motivate myself.

It's actually very difficult to come up with a new name for something that hasn't already been bagged by someone else, unless you call your new show 'Shubbley-Doobley-Woobley' or something like that!

We've always liked the word 'chump', and it's quite nearly our initials - Clarkson, Hammond, and May Productions.

I'm not soppy-romantic. I don't buy Valentine's cards or any of that cheesy crap.

I suppose I could do 'The Reassembler' at 80. But it would be a terrible cliche.

It would be a shame if the BBC didn't exist.

I don't have any quarrel with the BBC.

When we were kids, if somebody said, 'What did you watch last night?' you would have said, 'BBC Two,' but now they'll just say, 'My mobile.'

Some cyclists are complete prats, obviously, but so are some drivers.

I'm not a big film buff; I like watching films, but I tend to forget them.

I've never wanted to be on television for the sake of it, I suppose because I'm not one of life's natural presenters; I'm not an actor.

I think the astute viewer can recognise I am the proper bloke, because I have a toolbox and can put things back together, and I can quote W. B. Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

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.

I always said it was a privilege to end up on the television. It wasn't my ambition; I fell into editing magazines and writing about cars, and then I ended up on the telly.

If you are a man, I feel that practicality should always trump fashion.

Boilersuits are used by everybody from pilots in the army to racing drivers to people who clean your drains. The one piece overall is what all males secretly desire.

I have never stormed off over money or contracts. I am paid quite well by 'Top Gear.' I am pretty happy, and I have never seen Richard Hammond storm off, either.

I'm not beholden to anyone. I'm not waiting for a pension or a carriage clock.

I'm on television far too much. I'm not sure why. I've watched myself on TV from time to time. It's painful.

I know there have been some catastrophically unpopular programmes on television over the years. Has it ever got to the point where the only person still interested in what's happening is the person who's on the telly?

The three of us may be reunited on screen, we may go our separate ways, or we may disappear from the television altogether and each assume a place, alone, in the corner of a pub where any unsuspecting passing drinker who strays into an exclusion zone studiously avoided by the locals will be subjected to a predictable 'I used to be on TV' routine.

You have to be a bit mad and conceited to go on television.

We'd become lazy with 'Top Gear,' doing six or seven shows a series.

I'm quite happy to laugh at Argentina's obsession with ham and cheese, but not, you know, delicate bits of their history.

I don't like to think I am a celebrity; I am just a bloke on the telly.

I can't see Jeremy Clarkson having very many serious problems in his working life in the long run.

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 can't stand the need to be fashionable.

I don't want Jeremy Clarkson anywhere near my shed or my toolbox or my piano. He's interested in fashionable restaurants and celebrity gossip - I'm not interested in those.

I always wanted to be a teacher.

Not being part of the BBC with 'Top Gear' any more does pain me, because it's an organisation I approve of.

I love a bicycle, and I haven't been without at least one since I was three years old.

It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.

I don't have a worry about women because I keep reading that not only are they better at school, they are now better at parking, better at navigating... we know that women are good at everything.

There are all sorts of things embodied in the Lego brick - geometry and mathematics and truth and proportion and shape and colour... It is a faintly spiritual activity that everybody connects with.

I've got this theory that there is a Volvo in any sane person's future.

The reality is that we do not have an air traffic control system that is smart enough and technologically capable enough to be able to handle that kind of demand.

As more consumers demand less sugar, the food and beverage manufacturers will eventually come into line with what the consumers want.

I do not wish to help Jeremy Clarkson be amusing in the event of my death.

Never sacrifice your family. They are the most important thing in life.

Nothing in this life worth achieving is easy, nor is it impossible.

If your ideas are good they rise, and if they're a bit crap they sink.

France is a country you have to drive through to get to Italy. That's all it's there for.

As far as I can work out, no-one really loses out.

Would the Element be a car for people who like hip-hop, or for people waiting for a hip-op?