The Grand Tour’s Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May leave show in huge blow to fans

JEREMY Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are permanently parking The Grand Tour –  bringing to an end two decades as Britain’s favourite petrolhead presenters.

The news comes just a week after the BBC confirmed it was axing Top Gear, the show that saw them shoot to fame from 2003 to 2015.

The Grand Tour, which launched on Prime Video in 2016, quickly became  one of the streamer’s biggest hits but Jeremy, 63, James, 60, and Richard, 52, felt it was time they hit the road.

The streamer will consider potentially continuing the show further down the line with new hosts – an idea which the departing hosts are happy with.

A TV insider said: “It’s a surprising decision and everyone realises it very much marks the end of an era for the three presenters.

“The Grand Tour is one of Prime Video’s most watched shows and Jeremy, James and Richard have a devoted following.

“But the guys have made no bones about the fact they’re all advancing in years and they have lots of other projects to pursue.

“They just felt like the time was right and wanted to go out on a high when the show remained popular.”

Jeremy still has a third helping of Clarkson’s Farm to drop on Prime Video, with a fourth series potentially getting green lit after it was revealed it was the most watched show by a streamer over the past year.

Meanwhile James also has another one of his Our Man In… travelogues, which started in 2020, dropping soon on the streamer.

There are still two more helpings of The Grand Tour to drop on Prime Video too. Both will go out next year and see them travel to Mauritania and Zimbabwe.

They created The Grand Tour after previously presenting Top Gear as a trio up to 2015 when they left the BBC after a bust up with producers.

They transformed the programme from a niche motoring show into one of the Beeb’s most popular exports, with 350m viewers in 212 territories around the globe.

At its peak the show had three million YouTube subscribers, a magazine with 1.7 million readers, and in 2012 it entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012 as the world’s most watched factual TV show.

The guys brought that magic across to The Grand Tour after striking a lucrative deal with Prime Video and made another 44 shows, the latest of which aired in June of this year.

Meanwhile Top Gear was axed last Tuesday after Freddie Flintoff, who co-hosted the show with Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris, was involved in a horror smash during filming last year.

He went on to reach a settlement with the makers, BBC Studios, of £9m and resumed his broadcasting career after putting it on hold while he recovered.

Last week James May responded to the decision saying:  “I can see why it’s a tricky one for the makers, but I can’t believe it’s gone forever.

“I think it’s sad because I was a big Top Gear watcher when I was a teenager in the ’70s.”

Last week in his column in The Sun, Jeremy said he believed one of the main reasons Top Gear was being axed was because Freddie didn’t feel he could return to the show where he’d gone through the traumatic smash.

He wrote: “I don’t blame him. I know what happened on that awful day and it was horrific. Sure, the producers could try to find a replacement. But would you want that gig? Really?”

But Richard and James both had their own crash experiences while making both Top Gear and The Grand Tour.  Jeremy said they’d just wait until they recovered: “And then the show would go on.”