Eddie Jordan, a very rich man who once had his very own Formula One team and his very own mullet, and then who went to be an F1 analyst for the BBC when both of those collapsed, is said (?) to be one of the new hosts for Top Gear, according to a report from the Radio Times, joining a radio DJ and Joey from Friends.
I know this sounds completely strange, but two days ago, if you had told me that Matt LeBlanc, the guy who wasn’t David Schwimmer or Chandler on that show from the 1990s, would be hosting Top Gear, I’d say you were crazy. But here we are.
The Radio Times report has a lot of detail as well:
After weeks of wrangling, the Irish former motorsport boss turned commentator is expected to be named as part of the Top Gear “family” within days. Jordan hasn’t yet signed his contract but this is understood to be a “formality” according to sources on the show.
As RadioTimes.com revealed yesterday, the new programme, which is due to begin airing on 8th May, is to have a pyramid presenting structure with Chris Evans at the top.
One source went on to describe Eddie Jordan as having a “wacky beard,” and the Van Dyke style is definitely wacky as hell, so everything checks out.
The structure of the show , Radio Times reports, will be that of a pyramid, with Chris Evans the shining beacon atop it, and with Jordan and LeBlanc below him. The main three, who are basically starting a new show with a combined average age between them of 54, will be joined by another tier below them made of people who are semi-regulars, the report says, made up of people like www.jalopnik.com contributor Chris Harris and reigning Nürburgring queen Sabine Schmitz.
And that would actually make sense, if you consider how Harris and Schmitz have been quite weird about the whole thing as of late, with a lot of strange non-denial denials, and a lot of just hanging around the entire Top Gear crew.
But Jordan himself would definitely be an interesting choice. He’s known for embracing a bit of the oddball character in F1, crashing random press conferences, offering Niki Lauda a job, and and even supposedly contemplating being a priest and/or a dentist before racing full-time, because I’m sure those are all career paths normal people contemplate.
Priest, dentist, F1. Same thing, really.
He plays drums in a band, wears silly shirts, and has been even been photographed embracing Muppets from time to time. Pretty standard Top Gear stuff then.
The new show debuts May 8th.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 0D03 F37B 4C96 021E 4292 7B12 E080 0D0B 5968 F14E