Actually, Mr Bartlett, I fail to remember George Bishop having anything to do with ‘good humour’. I recall him as an irascible old curmudgeon who was less interested in evaluating cars at a manufacturer’s launch than quaffing the gratis
premier cru that the makers had thoughtfully ‘thrown in’ to soften-up the visiting journos, clearly not unaware that this might propitiate a favourable critique. I agree that Leonard Setright was an extremely gifted writer but both of these chaps sprang from very different times. Would either of them not have had high-octane contempt for the TV as we know it these days? They were first and foremost motoring writers, not TV presenters.
Certainly there does exist a crop deadweight presenters that have infested the idiot’s lantern these last ten years or so: Ross, Kaplinsky, Carr, Chiles, Humble, Wan, Lamb, Bradbury, that bird with the child-baring lips that reads the autocue, Allsopp, Kaye, Ant ‘n Dreck, Bruce, Edwards, that lardarse child-minder, McCall, Kyle… oh bo11ocks to it, just create your own list. I would suggest in comparison to this utterly egregious bunch that James May is an intellectual colossus. He has a modicum of wit, a good grasp of automotive history and can string a decent sentence together though these may not be essential prerequisites for the burger-stuffing, pepsi-swilling, prepubescent pondlife that seems to constitute much of TG’s audience, which, according to the RAJAR figures, continues to grow (I mean in viewing figure terms, not weight). After all TG is BBC-2’s biggest export. It may fail to stimulate cerebrally but it works on its own terms, albeit, in one eye, out the other.