Right, so, here's the thing. I loved the Clarkson/Hammond/May era of the BBC's Top Gear. I ended up with an Amazon Prime subscription because of The Grand Tour. What can I say? They make me laugh.
They recently tweeted out a plea for promo video content from their fan base for their upcoming special.
I may have taken it a bit too far...
Enjoy!
Scene: Exterior, field. Clarkson stands, sipping coffee, leaning on a fence. A vehicle approaches—we hear the tires on the road, but do not see the vehicle itself. Clarkson, however, does, and becomes indignant.
C: “May!”
M: (still out of the shot, the sounds of him exiting the car can be heard) “Morning.”
C: “What in God’s name—”
M: “I called and confirmed. It’s within the rules. (May enters the shot) ‘Put wheels on something Scottish’, they said. So I did.”
C: “I can assure you that is not what they meant.”
M: “I can assure you it is.”
Camera pans to show May’s vehicle, a Land Rover with a tartan paint job.
C: “Isn’t! That’s a total cop-out, is what that is. Blatant disregard for the spirit of the challenge, and I’m going to die on this hill.”
M: “You do that, Clarkson.”
Clarkson turns to crew off-camera and starts to ask whether or not May can be disqualified. We hear another vehicle approach. Both presenters turn to look in the direction of the noise.
C: “Oh my God.” (he laughs)
M: “He hasn’t thought this through.” (May joins the laughter)
C: “That’s the funniest bit—you know he has thought it through.”
H: (still out of shot) “Morning, you two!”
C: “Hammond, you idiot, what have you done?”
H: “I have very cleverly solved two problems in one, that’s what I’ve done.”
M: “Hammond. You’ve brought a car…made of biscuit!”
H: “Specifically, Scottish shortbread!”
Camera pans to show Hammond and his biscuit car.
C: “That’s going to work about as well as May’s eco-hippy mud truck!”
H: “Sod off, Clarkson, it’s miles better than May’s brick-mobile. It’s got a canopy rather than a full top so I won’t have the visibility problems, and it turns out that shortbread, even in massive quantities, is light enough that I can go faster than three miles per hour. There’s a frame to the canopy underneath the biscuit so it has some structural integrity and won’t go crumbling off one side.”
M: “Is the interior all biscuit as well?”
H: “It is.”
M: “What did you use to hold it together?”
H: “Royal icing!”
M: “You mean it’s actually edible?!”
H: “It is! Solving two problems at once, I said. If I don’t like the look of the menu wherever we stop, I can just break a chunk off the passenger side headrest.”
C: “Hammond, you do know where we are, don’t you?”
H: “Scotland.”
C: “And you know what month it is?”
H: “January.”
C: “And you have shown up in a car…made of biscuit.”
H: “Yes!”
C: “You do know what happens to biscuits if you dunk them too long in your tea, don’t you?”
H: “Aha, but I knew you were going to say that! I’ve waterproofed the exterior.”
C: “Dear God, what with?”
H: “Another Scottish thing. Scotchgard!”
May, who had broken a chunk of biscuit off one of the doors and started munching on it, is seen to be gagging and spitting it out.
H: “May!” (Hammond reaches into the back seat of his car and pulls out an aerosol of Scotchgard, spraying over the place where May pulled his bit off)
C: “Scotchgard isn’t Scottish!”
H: “Well, it sounds Scottish. Besides, that means I’ve still got one Scottish thing and one sounds-Scottish thing, which is half again as much as May has.” (tosses his head at May’s Land Rover) “Do the paint job yourself, did you, mate?”
M: “Certainly not. It’s one of those vinyl wraps.”
C: “And it’s ridiculous. And not within the spirit of the challenge.”
H: “’Put wheels on something Scottish’, Clarkson. It’s a good effort. Still not as Scottish as mine, though.”
M: “Not as Scottish as yours? I defy anyone to name a single thing more recognizably Scottish than tartan.”
H: “Shortbread!”
M: “One of the oldest forms of confection there is, Hammond, and not uniquely Scottish at all. In fact—”
C: “Oh, leave off with the history lecture, Dr. Slow. The point is that you’ve both done it wrong.”
M: “And just where is your Scottish-thing-with-wheels, then, Clarkson?”
C: “Ah. Well. About that.”
H: “Oh, crikey, what’s he done now?”
M: “I don’t see a vehicle of any description, so I’m assuming he’s waiting for some sort of massive, dramatic reveal.”
C: “Well, it would have been, but—”
M: “But what?”
C: “I, erm…haven’tgotachallengevehicle.”
H: “You what, mate? You don’t have a what?”
C: “I haven’t got a challenge vehicle!”
Cutaway to flashback sequence—exterior, car park. Clarkson is in front of the camera in a hard hat. Behind him is a fleet of large flatbed trucks with their rear ramps leaning up against a hillside.
C: (to camera) “Our current challenge is to ‘put something Scottish on wheels’. I have decided to put something so quintessentially Scottish on wheels that the other two won’t stand a chance against my genius. (into walkie-talkie) Right, lads, you can start pushing now.”
Cutaway to exterior, high stone wall, a long line of bulldozers with push bars attached to their fronts. Foreman in a heated discussion with an official looking woman in a suit who is vehemently shaking her head, arms crossed.
F: (into walkie-talkie) “Sorry, laddie, no can do. The wee lass from the historical society here says no, we cannae borrow it fer a few days, an’ whoever it was told ye ye could has a bridge ta sell ye, as well.”
Cut back to Clarkson.
C: “…Ah. My cunning plan may have hit a slight snag.”
End flashback sequence, return to exterior shot in front of the field, where Hammond and May are doubled over laughing.
H: “You tried to shove the entirety of Edinburgh Castle onto a fleet of lorries?”
C: “Well—”
H: “Edinburgh bloody Castle?!”
M: “Clarkson, you moron.”
C: “Yes, well, on that thundering disappointment—”
H: “--don’t miss The Grand Tour’s Scottish Special, Lochdown—”
M: “—coming to Amazon July 30th.” May pulls off a chunk of biscuit from the back seat of Hammond’s car and proceeds to eat it as the shot fades out. “Anybody doing a tea run?”
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