
James May recently told Radio Times that he, Clarkson and Hammond—the grumpy old dude fast-car driving dream team on The Grand Tour—may not continue dorking around with cars into eternity like we all hoped.
If you read the headline and thought “Just look at those guys, I don’t think anyone figured they’d have another five years in them,” then you’ve got a fair point, the same point that May made to the T.V. and radio listings magazine when he said:
We have to accept that fairly soon we will be too old for it...Richard Hammond is a reasonably fit bloke who looks after himself, me and Jeremy aren’t.
Then May took some stabs at his tall colleague, saying:
Jeremy is particularly decrepit and I find growing within me – I try to fight it for some reason, but I’m giving into it – a much stronger, nesty sort of instinct. Within the next five years I don’t want to be fart-arsing around.
I mean, he does make some strong points:

Though the three hosts have signed a three-year contract, it looks like the show’s days, with James May at least, are numbered. And James seems perfectly content to pass the torch, saying:
But you have to know when to step back, and to be honest I thought it would have happened by now. Eventually I want some other people to do it.
As sad as I’d be if these three guys stopped cohosting a car show, I still take solace in the fact that, even if May becomes “nesty,” he can probably still keep making awesome stuff like this:
Yeah, I think we’ll be alright.
DISCUSSION
The Grand Tour is nowhere near as good as Top Gear. The writing is not as sharp, the guys seem genuinely tired. Their show has always been heavily scripted, but it has never been so apparent and heavy-handed as it is in The Grand Tour. Maybe that is the joke? Anyway, I am having a really hard time of enjoying the new show, and goodness knows I am trying. I really, really hope it gets better. Conversation Street is awful, the whole killing the celebrity guest got really tired after the second guest on the first episode, and the whole irritating James May thing is dumb.
On the other hand, give me many more seasons of The Reassembler, James May’s Toy Stories, and James May’s Man Lab. He’s really the only one I find genuinely interesting (and intelligent).
Am I alone here?