Call the Midlife (41 page)

I am cleared to go home, as my signature on a contract will not be required anytime this side of late afternoon. The plan still being to announce to the world that
Top Gear
will be a bit more ginger from now on – at 7.15 p.m.

‘I’ll write a car review,’ I decide upon arriving home, a good omen. I’ve had my car review column for the
Mail on Sunday
since 2013 (April 13th – Subaru BRZ, I’ll never forget it) and I always look forward to scribbling down my thoughts each week.

Some weeks, admittedly, the car in question is less inspiring than others, but those are the weeks I have to dig deeper and therefore learn more about how to write and what to write to sustain the reader’s interest. This week’s car is the perfect case in point. The Nissan Nismo – as unappealing a ‘thing’ as I have ever laid eyes on – forces me to go for my first ever split five-star review. I give it one star out of five for design –because it’s hideous – but five stars out of five for its hugely unexpected half-decent performance when it comes to handling.

Later this afternoon, a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in a while has arranged to come round for a catch-up. We’re supposed to be meeting at mine, but a text pings in on my phone. It’s from my agent.

I call my pal and ask him if we can meet in the pub as something big is going down. ‘I can’t tell you what right now, but all will become clear if you stick around.’

Cut to 5 p.m. – we’re sitting outside my local on one of the creaky wooden tables, the glorious sunshine still with us, two ice-cold pints of Guinness the icing on the cake.

We place our phones on the table and began to chat about life, love and all things good. We’re giggling a lot – my pal is an extremely funny guy, funnier than any stand-up I’ve ever seen. We’ve all told him he could sell out arenas if he could be bothered to write himself a ninety-minute set.

‘So what’s going on with you?’ he asks after about forty-five minutes of hilarious impromptu monologue.

It is now only just over an hour until the moment when a simply worded BBC2 tweet will be posted, very calmly and quietly
breaking the ‘Evans is New
TG
Host’ news, but I still can’t tell him. I have to leave it just a wee bit longer. Obviously he wouldn’t tell anyone and I’m not even particularly paranoid, but for the first time in my life I find myself in a ‘don’t want to jinx it’ frame of mind.

I’ve never felt this way before, not even close, but this is different. This is the biggest deal I have ever been involved in. Bigger even than when I bought and sold my media group back in 2000 for hundreds of millions of pounds. Why? Because it’s not about the money this time, it’s about the opportunity and the faith the BBC, the most revered and respected broadcasting company on the planet, have put in me. This is the business I have wanted to work in ever since I was a little boy It doesn’t get any bigger than what’s about to happen.

Just writing that gives me goosebumps.

And then my friend makes my mind up for me:

‘Right, I’m going to shoot off,’ he says. ‘Good to catch up. Whatever it is that’s going down, good luck, tell me about it when you feel like you can.’

‘Oh no. You can’t go. I need someone here. With me. Now. Well, soon anyway.’

Suddenly he’s worried. Not my intention at all.

‘Is everything OK?’

‘Oh God no, nothing’s wrong, nothing at all. Far from it. Couldn’t be further from the case.’

‘So what, then? What’s happening?’

‘Er . . .’

‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’re being a bit weird?’

I decided to tell him.

‘What’s up is . . . the Beeb have asked me to do
Top Gear
.

‘What??’

‘The BBC. They’ve asked me to take over
Top Gear
. I said yes and they’re going to announce it at quarter past seven tonight.’

‘Shiiiiiit! That’s in fifteen minutes.’

‘I know, please will you stay till they do.’

‘Fuck, yes of course. This is massive!’

‘Yup, massive is one word.’

Right, fuck, hang on, I’ll go and move my car. Hold that thought. You get us another drink and I’ll be back in a second.
Top Gear
, what? Christ. This is mental!’

Moments later, our glasses recharged, my pal is back and the questions start coming thick and fast.

Top Ten Questions He Fired off within the First Five Minutes:

‘Do The Boys know?’

By The Boys, he meant Jeremy, James, Richard and Andy.

‘No, not yet but I’ll tell them just before it goes public.’

‘OK, good, yes, that’s good. That’s the right thing to do. Excellent, yes, you should – definitely.’

7.05 p.m.: I did precisely that.

I have discovered over the years that it always – and I mean ALWAYS – pays off to just keep doing the right thing, no matter how much it might make you feel sick or fill you with dread at the time.

I send the same text to each them:

Within moments Wilman and Clarkson respond, wishing me luck. As I’m reading their texts, my phone rings, I look at the screen, it’s James May.

All good.

No hard feelings.

Not easy for any of us.

I can only imagine how surreal this must seem to them.

Almost as much as it does for me.

I look down at my phone. It reads 7.14.

All still quiet on the Western Front.

Seconds later and – click: the clock on my phone changes to 7.15.

A beat.

And then . . .

It begins to buzz and doesn’t stop.

Each subsequent text crashing into the last.

The first of which reads:

By 7.16 my phone has gone into total and utter meltdown.

The ensuing twenty-four hours were like nothing I’ve experienced before. There’s fame and then there’s
Top Gear
fame. The two almost entirely unrelated. What started off as a monthly, regional half-hour motoring magazine programme in the Midlands back in 1978 had somehow in the last thirty-seven years mushroomed into the most popular, notorious and controversial television programme the BBC has ever broadcast.

Now it’s up to me to take that very same show in whichever direction I believe its destiny lies next.

The latest and greatest challenge of my career to date is well and truly under way.

I’ve been here before, but I’ve never been this
me
here before. I
am healthier, happier, more content and more stable than I have been for as long as I can remember.

If what I said in the opening pages of this book is true, about fifty not being the beginning of the end but rather the end of the beginning and the start of whatever comes next, then it’s going to be OK.

In fact it’s going to be more than OK.

Moments like these are what we train for all our lives, we just don’t know it until they happen.

And that’s the best bit.

Stay in the game, always.

It’s the only game there is.

Good luck and see you on the other side.

And remember:

If you’re doing something you don’t have to and you’re not enjoying doing it, you’re doing the wrong thing.

And on that bombshell . . .

Doubts and Certainties

Top Ten Doubts:

Twins from the same womb. Yin and yang, night and day, the sun and the moon. If you average them out over a lifetime, I wonder whether we all have equal amounts of both. Something tells me we probably should and that we probably do. Or at least it feels that way, which in the end is all that matters.

How was your childhood? Forget that, I don’t care. How did your childhood
feel?
Now you’re talking, a far more relevant and useful question. Mine felt pretty good, as it happens, but I’m sure from the outside looking in it may often have appeared pretty darn shifty. But if the facts never come to light, perception is all that matters, perception is all there is.

The midterm/midlife half-time period is an excellent breeding ground for doubts. This period is to doubts what the Pill was to the Sixties: a promise of unbridled promiscuous possibilities, more often than not running off in all the wrong directions.

Who hasn’t doubted themselves? No one worth their salt, in my book. I’ve doubted everything I’ve ever been or done. From my sexuality to what I currently do for a living. But what of doubts
per se
? What are they there for? Where do they come from? More spookily, where do they go? Or do they just get fed up and move on?

I suspect this may very much be the case.

When it comes to doubts I have decided it’s far better to adopt the Warren Buffett buy/sell philosophy. Buffett famously buys when everyone else is selling and sells when everyone else is buying. Run with the herd and you’ll only ever be one in a thousand. Instead of focusing on my doubts when things are not going as swimmingly as I hope they might be, like I used to, I cut myself some slack and regroup all my energy and ideas to charge in the direction most likely to help change the situation for the better. Almost as if I’m on the front line with no time or headspace to concern myself with anything other than survival or progress.

Conversely, when things are going well, whereas in the past I may have gone out and partied for a week or so, now I step back, have a cup of tea and check for bullet holes. Wow! Is this verging on sensible? Well, gee, I guess it is. And since sensible is verging on organized, my God we might even be within sight of the path of righteousness and all that other Mother Jazz.

I’ve also come to realize that eureka moments are not what I previously had them down to be. For the last twenty-five years I have interpreted eureka moments as incendiary explosive instances of spontaneous revelation that come from the gods.

Well, that’s obviously not true, is it? I now recognize them to be what they truly are: the answers that have been staring us in the face all along, that we fail to hear or see because we are too busy trying to be the hero of a moment that will never come.

If we are meant to know things, we will know those things already. Because we will already have done all the hard work to give us the information and experience our subconscious needs to arrive at a useful solution.

The more I recognize this fact every day, the more I benefit from its wisdom. It’s like my wise old Indian accountant when it comes to money. He has saved steadily and regularly all his life so he
never
has to worry about money in the autumn and winter of his days.

Not only that, he has enough money not just to survive but to do all the things he’s ever dreamed of. That was the dangling carrot that kept him going throughout his working life. He had a clear goal, applied a precise strategy and then rolled up his sleeves and went to work every day for forty-two years, hour by hour inching ever closer to his own private Elysium.

The same is true when it comes to cashing in your eureka chips. Many of the answers to our most profound questions are already answered and just waiting to be dialled up within our psyche. Again, it’s not unlike training for the marathon. Come the day, if you’ve put in the right amount of hours doing the right thing, everything you need should be there for you when you need it.