Interview with James May
LCC meets the long time co-host of Top Gear and The Grand Tour to discuss bicycles and why they’re perfect around cities
LCC meets the long time co-host of Top Gear and The Grand Tour to discuss bicycles and why they’re perfect around cities
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What do you think about cars in cities?
I hate driving in London. I always have. I avoid it. It feels like a totally pointless activity. And it spoils cars for me. It makes them boring and annoying.
Obviously I’ve spent a lot of time over the years writing about cars and making TV about them, and I love cars, but I do think in my bones they don’t really belong in towns. Cars are great for going between places, like from London to my pub in Wiltshire.
But within London I don’t want to drive the car, and when I’m down in the village in Wiltshire I don’t want to drive around either.
Bicycles work…
Bicycles are a genuine door-to-door transport solution. Cycling is fantastic in cities.
Even Google Maps will acknowledge that a bicycle is quicker for some journeys than a car. It amazes me that people go to the shops a mile away in the car.
The world has proved that bicycles make immense sense in densely populated areas.
Where do you cycle?
I live in Hammersmith and have to do a lot of things up in town: voiceovers, meetings and so on. So I cycle four or five miles each way. I quite often stop off at Russell Square to have a crafty fried egg sandwich at the cabby shelter.
And, of course, it’s pretty much flat.
Have you always cycled?
I used to ride a bicycle massively when I was young. Me and my mates would cycle to Paris, or cycle across the Norfolk Broads, hundreds of miles. And then later in life, you rediscover it.
I’m almost loathe to admit it because I used to mock Richard Hammond, but it turns out that exercise is good for you and cycling is a fantastic way to do it.
It’s low impact and it’s genuinely useful, in a way that jogging isn’t. Jogging is just undignified.
Do you feel responsible for promoting overuse of cars?
No. People were mad about cars long before we started talking rubbish about them on the telly. The second half of the 20th century was a massive love-affair with the car. It’s quite phenomenal when you look at the history.
They’ve always been objects of desire. They’re capable far beyond what is required of them, but then that’s also true of our laptops and wristwatches and trainers.
Okay, but we don’t tend to get killed by our wristwatches…
No, no, indeed. Cars are marvellous things, but we have to use them with a great deal of care and discretion, otherwise they’ll be taken away from us.
And it’s not, the government, it’s not ‘The Man’ — it will end up being legal tenability and the weight of public opinion.
People get very complacent driving cars, because it’s easy, and you are very protected and you’re very isolated inside your car. It’s easy to forget that there’s a huge amount of energy inside a car, even when it’s only going 20 or 30mph.
I saw a bloke the other day driving a Ferrari around town very aggressively, and I wanted to say, ‘You’re going to ruin cars (and especially Ferraris) for the rest of us’.
It’s a massive privilege having a car and you have to take it seriously. That’s why my only remaining ambition, apart from not falling off my bike again, is to get to the end of my life without running anybody over.
We ultimately can’t have self-driving cars then, can we?
Because self-driving cars would have to be imbued with a morality, and once you try and do that you realise that cars are actually immoral. They are ‘kill and not be killed’ devices.
Do you only see cycling as a step on the way to a car?
No. The bicycle is the only thing in physics that seems to give you something for nothing. I’m still amazed by it now.
A bicycle massively improves the efficiency of the walking human being, and on the whole they are much easier to maintain and buy than horses.
It is no coincidence that lots of the world’s great car manufacturers — Peugeot, Škoda, BMW, Rover — started off by making bicycles.
Long time Top Gear and Grand Tour trio: James with fellow bike lover Richard Hammond and fellow pub landlord Jeremy Clarkson – Credit: Amazon Prime Video
“It's a joy to ride a bicycle... something is childlike about it - it makes me feel about eight years old. ”
What should cycle campaigners do differently?
Be more humorous! The cycling lobby can be a bit po-faced. But it’s a joy to ride a bicycle. It’s free at the point of use, there’s no admin, there’s something very child-like about it — it makes me feel about eight years old. Be more fun. Emphasise the fun!
What do you dislike about bicycle infrastructure?
You don’t need vehicle levels of traffic control for bicycles. People on bicycles are really just pedestrians. A bicycle is just an elaborate bit of footwear.
As long as people cycle in a sympathetic way, and pedestrians are still at the top of the hierarchy — the world belongs to people, not machines — then it ought to work.
For example, there’s a bicycle traffic light near me at Turnham Green in Chiswick. But really it should just be a ‘give way’ sign and we should allow for the wit of humanity.
Not every action needs to be controlled. I find it slightly extremist.
What do you want for cycling?
I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe a central government Minister of Cycling?
What do you want for your nearby Hammersmith Bridge?
I live in west London, and when Hammersmith Bridge was first closed everybody said it was going to completely mess up traffic flow.
Possibly it did for a bit, but then after a while nobody noticed. If I was still commuting to the Top Gear studio I’d find its closure a bit inconvenient, but there are other bridges.
If they ever finish mending it, I don’t see why Hammersmith Bridge shouldn’t also have some shrubbery, some benches, a few little cafés and hotdog stands. Like Ponte Vecchio [in Florence] which has no cars on it.
It’s great. That sort of thing was quite common in the medieval era. The original London had whole towns on bridges: London Bridge had about 600 people living on it.
So I’d like Hammersmith Bridge to be more medieval. But with better sanitation. And less plague.
If you were Mayor for the day, what would you do?
I’d bring the bus fare cap back to £2. Raising it to £3 is a 50% increase, which is a lot. And I’d make all people doing roadworks in London accountable.
If you’re contracted to do roadworks, and there’s nobody actually working on it, the managing director has to stand there and hand £10 each to every driver and cyclist and bus passenger that goes past.
That’s their incentive to get on with it.
What about anti-cycling opposition?
Some of it smacks of sheer bloody-mindedness. Kensington & Chelsea Council says it’s not going to have any cycling infrastructure — well why not?
There’s plenty of space. Big wide roads. Why are they being tw*ts about it?
Most of the anti-cycling rage that I read, like that nonsense in the Daily Telegraph about bicycles doing 50mph, is clearly just rubbish. The most I’ve ever managed according to my Garmin is 31mph and that was downhill in Richmond Park, and the world record is something like 40mph.
I don’t understand how the editors and subeditors could have looked at that front page and not thought, hang on a minute. [Ed — legal e-bike speeds are capped at 25km/h or 15mph, but electric motorbikes, with pedals and throttle, can easily top 50mph].
James on his Trek, one of over 25 bikes in his collection
“It amazes me when people go to the shops a mile away in their car - the world has proved that bikes make immense sense in densely populated areas!”
How would you change the driving test?
I was involved in the development of an app for the UK driving theory test.
People go on about all sorts of ways to improve driving training: why don’t we test young people on the motorway, why don’t we retest people over 60?
But I think the best thing you could do with the driving test is make a part of it on a bicycle.
Use with care…
The thing that really bothers me is road sectarianism. Quite a few people in cars seem to be somehow offended by people riding bicycles because they’ve paid all this money for a car and think therefore they should be rewarded for it, but often they’re just not using the car very intelligently.
And some people don’t use their bicycles very intelligently either! I find it baffling that people can’t get on a bit better and have a more of a give-and-take attitude.
You like a fixer-upper too?
I love bicycles as things as well as riding them. They’re relatively inexpensive, you don’t need elaborate tools to maintain them, and getting a bicycle to work really well is incredibly satisfying.
It really winds me up when people treat their bikes like crap. The Dutch treat all their bikes as chattels and end up by throwing them in the canal. I just don’t understand it.
Half an hour with a few Allen keys, a spanner and a can of lube and you can make a bike work beautifully.
You see people riding around on quite tricksy bikes but they’ve got dried-out rusty chains or their tyre pressure is too low, and all I think is you’re wasting energy.
I don’t like seeing any machinery being abused, but there’s something particularly tragic about abused bicycles. It feels like kicking a puppy.
QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS
What vehicles do you own?
About seven motorcycles. Maybe nine cars. A boat. An aeroplane. Over 25 bicycles. Quite a few of them are ones I’ve built.
What bikes would you take for The Grand Tour: Cycling Special?
I would take my Trek. Hammond would go for a gravel bike. Clarkson’s really bad at riding bicycles because he’s inept; he’d want something like a fat-tyred mountain bike with e-assist.
Favourite TV show?
My own — James May and the Dull Men’s Club.
Favourite cycling moment?
Going past something that smells fantastic. The pub on the corner by Olympia on a busy summer evening with fresh beer… smelling coffee… kebab vans… the water in Hyde Park and the mulchy earth after it’s rained.
Highlights of the May bike collection:
This article was originally published in London Cyclist spring 2025, London Cycling Campaign’s exclusive member’s magazine. Join as a member today for quarterly copies of London Cyclist delivered to your door, free legal advice, discounts in independent bike shops across London, and much more…
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