Steve Berry was one of Top Gear’s longest-serving experts, but he says he never ‘got on’ with his best-known co-star, Jeremy Clarkson, who he remembers as a ‘massive show off’
During the 90s, Steve Berry wasknown as Top Gear’s main motorcycle expert, sharing the screen with Tiff Needell, Vicki Butler-Henderson, and Jeremy Clarkson. However, not all relationships in the team were smooth sailing.
Jeremy Clarkson began hosting Top Gear in 1988 (Image: Daily Record)
Steve opened up to Al Arabiya News about his chilly rapport with Clarkson: “Jeremy Clarkson and I never got along,” he confessed, describing the show’s star as a “massive show off and egotist”.
He vividly remembers their first encounter: “The first shoot that I went along on was presented by a certain Mr. Jeremy Clarkson. And I’ll never forget this, he turned up two hours late.”
Berry, eager to make a good impression, arrived early, only to find Clarkson’s careless behaviour had angered the crew: “I turned up half an hour early because I wanted to impress. He turned up to hours late and the crew were fuming. Absolutely fuming, I thought. Right, make a point, don’t do that because you want the crew on your side.”
Clarkson’s rapport with the crew had been strained before, culminating in the infamous ‘fracas’ with producer Oisin Tymon in 2015, which led to the end of what many consider Top Gear’s golden era.
Despite a petition signed by over half a million fans, the BBC parted ways with Clarkson. After the Top Gear débacle, Clarkson joined forces with Richard Hammond and James May for Amazon’s big-budget streaming show The Grand Tour.
Reflecting on the tumultuous exit from Top Gear, Steve believes it worked out for the best: “I think Clarkson, Hammond and May quit at exactly the right time.”
Steve reflected on the moment he realised a TV show was starting to run out of ideas, saying: “It was just on the cusp of them starting to, some of the ideas were coming around for the second or third time. There was still an engaging watch, but I thought, when they quit, I thought ‘Oh, that’s good timing’.”
He also shared a rare moment of camaraderie with Clarkson, despite their known differences: “In real life, Jeremy is a less bombastic version of that person that you see on the screen,” he remarked. “You couldn’t act that persona for all the years that he has.”
Steve added: “He is kind of like that, and like I said, even though he and I never really got on together, the last time I met him in person, there was a bar, it was at a car show and there was an open bar and he said, ‘Berry, people know we don’t like each other, I’ll buy you a pint and we’ll stand over there pretending we like each other’.”
Currently, Steve is pouring his efforts into creating a new, accessible supercar, questioning the complexity and power of modern sports cars: “I thought, why have sports cars become so incredibly complex and so insanely powerful?”.
He mused about a simpler approach: “What if we went back to the principles of the Lotus Elite, a car that was super lightweight. And which had skinny tyres and had about 75 brake horsepower.”
He concluded with a vision for the automotive industry: “We’ve got enough hyper cars. Oh, why do they have to be so expensive?
“Let’s build something that’s lightweight, simple, and fun, and retails for a fraction of the cost of this other stuff.
“You don’t need to go crazy fast to have fun. If a car is simple and it’s very direct and you feel connected to the road, 50 miles an hour can feel like 150 miles an hour.”
