James May admits feeling ‘frail’ as he opens up on health impact of Grand Tour ahead of exit
The Grand Tour star James May has opened up about feeling more “frail” now, compared to when the trio first started their long-running career together, ahead of the final episode.
On September 13, May will reunite with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond for the final episode of their hit Amazon Prime series – titled One for the Road – which was filmed last year.
The episode will bring together the end of their 22-year working relationship, with it being reported earlier this year that they had officially dissolved their production company W. Chump and Sons.
A synopsis for the last ever episode reads: “In their last ever Grand Tour adventure, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May ignore Mr Wilman’s instruction to drive EVs down a grey British motorway and go rogue, heading to Zimbabwe in three glorious cars they’ve always wanted to own.
“A 1982 Lancia Montecarlo, a 1974 Ford Capri 3-litre and a 1974 Triumph Stag. They embark on a classic road trip through some of the most stunning landscapes they’ve ever encountered, winding through mountains, going across dry planes, cruising down boulevards, and taking their chances crossing a crocodile-infested lake on three unusual car-carrying boats.”
The trio will also find themselves trying to make their last outing as relaxing and agreeable as they can, flitting between extremely pleasant hotels, along with the typical road trip challenges.
As usual, Clarkson, May and Hammond encounter some issues along the way, with brutally rough terrain, mechanically misbehaving cars, and the terrifying prospect of crashing stopping them in their tracks.
“Just for old time’s sake, they visit their favourite location from 20 years of travelling the world, where they say an emotional farewell to their lives together on The Grand Tour.”
The trio recently opened up about how they feel to finally be saying goodbye to their TV career together, with May noting that feeling “frail” was one of the reasons they felt now was a good time to end The Grand Tour.
He explained: “I’ve always said if it ends tomorrow, which it nearly did at one point, that I should just be grateful that I had the opportunity. I could always have gone back to some sort of proper life and done something responsible and sensible.
“But it didn’t end, it kept going. In the end, we got to the point where we said, ‘No, we must stop whilst we’re still vaguely ahead. We mustn’t keep going until we embarrass ourselves.”
May added that he did have “mixed emotions” about their departure and will “miss the adventure and the experiences” but admitted: “I won’t really miss the stress of it because I’m old now and a bit frail compared with back then.
“I don’t know what to do next, but it’s a nice thing to look back on and think, ‘We did that’.”
May also added that the trio were “naive” about the whole thing and had no idea how long it would run for, not expecting their success to come from writing and talking about cars.
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Despite saying goodbye to the stressful life of driving old bangers and supercars, it doesn’t seem like May’s colleague Clarkson is slowing down anytime soon as he recently celebrated the opening of his pub – The Farmer’s Dog.
The Diddly Squat Farm owner recently opened up on whether he will still be in contact with his friends and told multiple press: “I can see them whenever I want,” before noting that May will probably not make the trip.
“James probably won’t, but Richard will. I talked to Richard only yesterday. We’re mates and we’ll still see them. We couldn’t possibly have imagined we’d be together for 22 years when we started out. And so it’s a wrench, thinking, ‘God, we’re never going to do that again’.”
