LISTEN: Top Gear gets into drive mode

Fans are biting their nails as the world's most popular car show takes a sharp turn. Paul Ash met the new Top Gear frontmen Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc

Matt LeBlanc strides into the room, beaming like a Cheshire cat. He waves to me. "Hey, how are ya?" he says, and such is his effusiveness that for a moment I think I've run into an old friend. Which I suppose I have.

We are in a wood-panelled dining room at the glorious Langham Place Hotel in London. Sitting across the vast mahogany table from me is Chris Evans and a nervous BBC producer who keeps looking at his watch.

Chris and Matt almost hug each other. Brothers in arms - which the new faces of Top Gear had better be if they're going to get out from under the long gargoyle shadow cast by Jeremy Clarkson.

Matt plunks down next to Chris and beams at the bare-fang-grinning press pack. A British reporter jumps in right away - no holding back there, mate. "Are you nervous?" he asks.

Matt: No.

Chris: It's like making a movie. You've got to be focused but that takes away the nerves.

Matt: Most nervous for me was Monday night, having to do a burnout in that Mustang. I didn't want to run anybody over.

Chris: My TV shows are live. It makes me feel sick, like when you get called to see the headmaster. You don't care if he hits you, just f****** do it! When we were sat in the Mustang, I was nervous then.

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Matt: Yeah, because I was driving.

Another British reporter chimes in with quavering voice: "Is it a show about cars or is it a show for a certain type of man?" (Water gurgles into a glass, gloop-gloop-gloop; Chris thuds the jug down, right in front of my mic).

Matt: Hopefully it's a show for a certain type of everyone. The cars will still be the stars of the show. And we'll have a few laughs and the show travels around. It's kinda like a travel show, we get to experience a bit of culture from here and there. Hopefully there's a bit of something for everyone.

Chris: Yeah. The car will be more of a star than it has been for the last few years (he pronounces his a's in that lovely Northern way, as in "at"). The cars go back to the centre of the story. People are always interested in the cars - what they look like, how fast they go, how much they cost, how economical they are ... The raw material is different cars every week. When Matt's show was being written, you had to create this heat every week, which is why there are so many writers. On Top Gear we go in to the studio to meet the writers and all you can see on the computer screens are maps or visa applications, because it's a logistics thing.

Matt: The hard bit for me is getting a shot for this and a shot for ... typhoid and hepatitis. Where are we going? Why do we keep getting jabbed with needles? This was supposed to be fun, do a little driving.

The reporter is not satisfied. "When I say type of man," she says, "I mean ... the criticism from the previous incarnation is that it was very much a male-orientated and male-dominated show. It was about cars, but cars for blokes."

Chris: Is that an opinion or is that actual statistics?

Reporter: It was a lot of comment ...

Chris: Comment-schmomment. I'd like to know what the demographics are. I think a lot of women watch Top Gear.

Producer: It was enjoyed by families as well ...

Matt: This is not a show about statistics of cars - that one is so many horsepower and this pulls so many Gs in a turn and is this quick through the slalom. I mean, we go to these far-off places and do these reviews. It's almost like being able to travel from the comfort of your couch. That's got a unisex appeal to it.

Chris: When it's announced that you're doing Top Gear you don't have to ask anybody's opinion because people just come and tell you. The people who come to talk to me tell me who's watching. And that's a lot of women. And loads and loads of children.

Matt: I was just coming back from LA and Cate Blanchett stopped me on the jetway and said: "Is it true you're the new host of Top Gear? Can I be on the show?" (The press pack cackle as one). So there's your answer.

Reporter: Will she be?

Matt: I hope so.

Chris: He texted me straight away.

German reporter: What other dream guests have you got on your list?

Chris: I want Beckham on. He loves his cars, Becks, and we love him. We asked him what his three favourite cars were. No1 is his Land Rover Defender - he always gives the right answer, Becks. Then a 1976 Aston Martin Vantage, and then his Audi RS6. The car he bought with his first real wages was a purple VW Golf.

There follows a lengthy explanation from Chris about meeting Alex Renton, series editor and one of the few survivors of the old team, at home in Primrose Hill. "How do I make Top Gear?" asked Chris. So Alex popped round to tell him. It took weeks.

Alex hired a team while Chris sat down with all the past episodes of the show and watched how it had evolved. As he tells the story, Chris brims with the happiness of someone who, while out for a ramble in the woods, has tripped over a gold ingot. As he talks, I remember watching him on TV in 1995 on his show called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, on which participants could win an all-expenses-paid trip to Greece or Grimsby.

block_quotes_start We're more fascinated by cars than we know. From early in our life there's cars around us - cars take us to school, we have toy cars as kids block_quotes_end

Me: On your show in 1995, you drove a dish of chicken korma (with a golf club) into a live studio audience and I remember thinking that was inspired television. What kind of insanity have you got in store for us?

Chris: You can't start with the insanity. Matt, explain the low-hanging fruit theory.

Matt: Yeah, the rule for us [on Friends] was low-hanging fruit is off limits. You can't pick the obvious joke. And if you do, you have to do it in a way that's creative. You want the fruit from the top of the tree.

Chris: You can't really say you're gonna be insane because you start with the froth and it's just a bit silly. You have to start with the raw material. People ask: "How're you gonna keep it edgy?" You can't keep something edgy, you have to be original - that will be perceived as being edgy. It's like being in a boat and you have no wind and trying to blow your own sail.

Matt: We are both huge fans of the old show. We loved it. I wish it was still on. It would be a lot easier for me to just sit on the couch and watch.

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German reporter: What's in your own garage?

Matt (sighs): Oohh, I have a fleet of Corollas (We laugh politely). I'm a Porsche guy. I've had a couple of Ferraris in the past. I'm a technology nut. I like the science of making things go faster.

Chris: I got loads of things. I bought a 2000 Mercedes AMG on auction for £10,000 [R226,000], I've got Peter Sellers' old DB5 convertible which he gave to Princess Margaret. I've got a '76 Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible, which was my daily driver till I bought one of the last Land Rover Adventurers, the long-wheelbase Defender. Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang is in my garage.

Matt: When are we taking that out for a drive?

Chris: Mate, whenever you like. That does gallons to the mile, that car, not miles to the gallon.

Matt: Let's do it when my daughter comes to visit. She loves that movie.

British motoring hack: How many times did it take you to get your driver's licence?

Chris: Three.

Matt: I got it first time, in the snow, in my stepfather's rusted AMC Javelin. You could see the road in the pedalbox, you could see right through the floor. It had a wooden block screwed to the gas pedal - my mother's kinda short - so she could drive it.

Chris: One of the things we want to do is go round the world to find the easiest driving test. We're going to get the three worst drivers we can find and get them to take the test in the three easiest countries.

A German reporter mutters a question about "buddy TV". There is an awkward silence (did he say "butty TV"?) "How will you make sure the chemistry is there?" he adds (whew - we exhale).

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Matt: There's an old saying - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the format worked before. Chris and I will be in it every week and there'll be one with Sabine [Schmitz, German racing driver] - she'll be involved in the camaraderie of it all. Or Eddie [Jordan, Irish motorsport supremo]. As it goes along it'll have different shapes.

Ah, Sabine. Any mention of her was bound to raise that question, the one that involves her, Chris and a couple of circuits around the Laguna Seca in California. The German motoring hack takes a shot: "Are you worried about being carsick? Have you been carsick?"

Chris: Well, no, because now I've been carsick more than anybody else in the world, it would seem. With Sabine at the wheel. I wasn't carsick driving myself, no. But I would be sick again. And I challenge anybody - I will pay for your flight to go to Laguna Seca - and I defy you not to throw up yourself when she drives you down the corkscrew 12 times with 5Gs either side. It's hideous. Four days later she took a Top Gun pilot out - Top Gun pilots fly fast jets over war zones - and he threw up. (We laugh like hyenas). That made me feel slightly better.

Matt: I've had maybe 700 laps around Laguna Seca on a motorcycle and even if you're driving it's very disorientating - it's a left-right chicane that drops six storeys and the entrance is blind. If you're not driving ...

Chris: It was horrible, honestly.

Matt: Vomit City.

Chris: The Top Gun pilot will never, ever live it down. Now he's got to go back and say this German lady was driving him round in a car and he threw up. That's not good rap.

German reporter: You've gone from playing a character in Friends to playing some version of yourself in episodes. Are you going to be just Matt LeBlanc in Top Gear?

block_quotes_start There are big giant muscle cars that are cool. Cars are cool. No matter what kind of car block_quotes_end

Matt: Am I? Look, it's not a documentary of who Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc are - it's about cars. There's a part where we have to do a review on the car. I'm the first guy to tell a joke at a funeral - I don't like it when things get too serious. I think they brought me in just for the comic element of it all. I love cars, I really do love cars.

Chris: He's playing down how much he knows about cars. So we're in these two Reliant Rialtos (remember the three-wheel car Mr Bean drives? That one) and we're on walkie-talkies and it's this 12-hour journey and it's raining and there's no roof. And Matt's breaks down and he ends up on the back of a lorry in his Reliant. He's on the back of the lorry for six hours and he's got these flashing lights right in front of him. I was behind then and it was driving me insane.

Matt: It was like waterboarding.

Chris: I'd rather be driving the car for 12 hours than be on the back of this truck for six hours. And he had a bear suit on as well, with big paws. And one of the producers says "Matt, even though you're on the back of a lorry, can you do us a review on the Reliant?" Thirty-five minutes later he says "Is that enough?" You have to know something about cars to keep talking about a Reliant for that long.

Matt: Well, when you're in a Reliant that has broken down and embarrassed you ... We're heading to Blackpool with an army of paparazzi following us, people on bridges as we go by. So my review might have been a little slanted. I was bagging on that thing. "This piece of sh*t" ... It went on and on and on.

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Me: So, what is it about the phenomenon of Top Gear that has turned it into this global thing?

Chris: We're more fascinated by cars than we know. From early in our life there's cars around us - cars take us to school, we have toy cars as kids. Then we get a pedal car, then a scooter because we're fascinated by movement - we always want to go quicker. Our scooters become bicycles, bicycles lead us to our friends, friends lead to our experiences. We aspire to getting a driver's licence and then a car. And the things that happen in that car for the first time may or may not be the thing that dreams are made of.

Me: Are you going to be flying the flag for Detroit?

Matt: There almost seems like there's a different design parameter in American cars. European cars seem to be designed for going around corners. American cars seem to be designed around straight-line acceleration. The drag racer ...

Chris: Basically, towards Canada.

Matt: Yeah: A difference in culture, perhaps. We've got these wide-open spaces with these straightaways so you want that straight-line speed. There are big giant muscle cars that are cool. Cars are cool. No matter what kind of car. Even that Reliant. There was something charming about that thing, right up until it took a sh*t on me. And died, poor thing. (Chris claps in delight, and we're done.)

Watch Top Gear on BBC Brit (DStv channel 120) on Wednesdays at 20:00