This one is dedicated to a reader who is going through some very difficult personal issues right now. Strength and courage, my friend.

Given how depressingly stupid politics and current events have gotten recently – and, not entirely coincidentally, given how horrid the weather is where I am right now – it is sometimes difficult to find cause for good cheer in this world.

Which, of course, is why the Lord, in His beneficence and wisdom, gave us Jeremy Clarkson and TOP GEAR:

It is not difficult for anyone to see why TOP GEAR was once the greatest TV show on air anywhere in the world. The 2001-2015 run of the show remains hilarious and awesome to this very day.

Unfortunately, as everyone who is reading this knows, in 2015 Jezza went and punched a production assistant in the physog, and that was just too much to be borne for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation. They fired him after a drawn-out investigation in order to avoid setting an ugly precedent, and after years of tolerating Jeremy Clarkson’s highly irreverent and extremely politically incorrect comments.

Having 350 million fans on one’s side does tend to give one a measure of protection from the SJW set, fortunately. But there are limits even to that kind of patience.

The Beeb did, however, make one huge miscalculation. They thought that they could get rid of Jeremy – the heart and soul and personality of the show – and still carry on with Hammond and May simply by adding a new presenter.

Instead, Richard Hammond and James May stood by their good friend and quit. And the executive producer, Andy Wilman, promptly quit as well. Then most of the old production crew followed suit.

The [deleted] idiots who run the BBC decided, for some unbelievably [expurgated] stupid reason, to replace the, very male, minds behind the blokiest show about blokes ever to bloke across our TV screens, with – and I’m not making this up – women.

And that was after they brought in not three, but six, new presenters – most of whom were evidently there just to fill “diversity quotas”, and only two of whom were even remotely well known to audiences. Chris Evans was known mostly for being a shouty ginger nerd with his own radio show – which by the way is now kaput as well, but for perfectly sound and good reasons relating to Mr. Evans’ family life – with a massive car collection packed full of Ferraris. And Sabine Schmitz was known mostly for being the Queen of the Nurburgring, who had featured in previous TOP GEAR episodes.

To the surprise of precisely nobody who paid even the slightest bit of attention to what was going on, the “retooled” show was a complete flop. And to the delight of all of us old-school TG fans, he was booted from the show after just one season.

Then more stupid happened. He was replaced by – and there is no gentle way to put this – an American.

I mean, of all of the stupid, absurd, INSANE, [UNPRINTABLE] things to do, they went and put an American on a British car show…

It should not surprise anyone that the latest version of the show isn’t doing all that well either.

But enough of all of that. It’s ancient history by this point.

The thing is, the three hosts of the old show did go on to make The Grand Tour on Amazon’s Prime platform. And that is very much to the good. But, even a rabid fan like me will admit that the latter show is somehow… missing something.

The magic of the old TOP GEAR format isn’t there. I don’t know what it is, exactly – whether it’s the audience interactions, the very obvious fact that His Stigness is missing, or the way that the celebrity interviews feel and sound a bit flat somehow, but in many ways The Grand Tour is just not quite up there with the sheer brilliance of its predecessor.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a terrific show. But I don’t think anything will ever come close to matching the utter madcap genius of the original show, especially between Series 17 and 21. I still dissolve into gales of helpless laughter every time I see the news segment from S17E02 concerning “the growler”:

As bad as things get in this world, it is often a great comfort to know that we can still have a good laugh from time to time. And even during times of great and difficult change, it is very helpful to know that some things never change or mature.

Like, say, Jeremy Clarkson’s sense of humour, which is still exactly the same as it always was:

It all just goes to show the truth in the old saying:

Actually, in the case of TOP GEAR: