Apparently, The Grand Tour’s legal team are so scared of getting sued by the BBC that they’ve handed Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May a massive list of things they can’t do or say.

The ridiculous list includes: complimenting Namibia’s scenery, James May saying the word ‘cock’, or Jeremy introducing the news as ‘the news’.

Andy Wilman, Clarkson’s friend and producer of the new Amazon show, said lawyers had warned the presenters they risked being sued by the BBC if they incorporated elements that were too similar to Top Gear, The Telegraph reports.

They got funnier and funnier. We went to Namibia to make a big film. The lawyers got out a film we had done [for Top Gear] in Botswana. The lawyers go through everything and they said, ‘There’s a scene in [Top Gear] where you’re in the middle of the Okavango and you go, “This scenery is beautiful”, so watch that you don’t do that.”

“So we were in the desert in Namibia and we had to go, “for legal reasons, this scenery is shit”. – Andy Wilman

The new show’s studio – a big tent they move to a different location for each episode – will include a leaderboard showing how well different cars had performed, but with no handwritten lap times for fear of standing on Top Gear’s toes.

Discussions became particularly ridiculous when Wilman was forced to examine James May’s use of the word cock, as he frequently said it on the BBC show.

Wilman also accepted that he and the presenters had a ‘broken relationship’ with the BBC before Clarkson was sacked for punching a producer, but thinks the corporation should have fined the presenter rather than axing him.

The new show is set for release at the end of Autumn, and no doubt the BBC will have their beady eyes on it for any legal infringements.


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