James May has one word for why his on-screen 22-year-long relationship with fellow TV presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond worked so well – “needle”. The veteran broadcaster reckons bickering was always crucial to the trio’s success on Top Gear and then The Grand Tour.

“The relationship was partly about friendship and partly about rivalry – three is a crowd, there is no doubt about that,” he says. “It’s true in reality, and it’s also true on television. Three is a magic number in religion, but it’s a difficult number in TV. So that needle made it work on Top Gear and The Grand Tour.”

The madcap motorists came together in 2003 when May replaced Jason Dawe in the second series of a Top Gear reboot already fronted by Clarkson and Hammond. Their instant chemistry or the fact “we got on each other’s wicks quite badly”, as James likes to call it, clearly contributed to the programme’s immense global popularity.

Not only was Top Gear the BBC’s top export for many years, the presenters’ hilarious fractiousness also turned The Grand Tour, their second show together, into a worldwide ratings juggernaut for Prime Video. Sadly, that came to an end last year when all three decided to go out at the top, while viewers were still saying “We want more!” rather than, “Oh no, not that tired old trio again!”.

James stresses it was the right time to finish his on-screen association with his two amigos. “We thrashed the subject pretty thoroughly, we were running out of places to go,” he says. “And there comes a point when you have to end these things with dignity, rather than waiting for them to disintegrate. The expression we always used to use was ‘landing it safely, rather than flying it into a cliff’.”

The three presenters were also well aware that they were no longer the new kids on the block. “There’s no denying that,” affirms James, 62. “I do my best to be a contemporary human being, but our view of the subject was becoming quite old-fashioned. “It’s a world that’s changed a great deal, even in the time we’ve been talking about cars. So, I like to think we did the decent thing and left the field clear for someone else to reinvent the genre.”

James, whose partner is critic Sarah Frater, says the trio have no intention of reviving The Grand Tour. “You can’t ever say never,” he adds with a caveat. “But at the moment, I can’t envisage it. We’ve all got other things to do, and we’re all getting on a bit.

“A huge part of me, in fact, almost all of me, would rather let it rest, so that it can be remembered fondly. When you get reunions of old rock bands, or they bring old TV shows back as a stage show, there’s a little bit of me that always slightly cringes and thinks, ‘No, just let it go’.”

He carries on that the threesome’s time together was, “A brief spark. It was great, and then it was gone. A bit like teenage love. You can’t bring that back, not when you reach our age anyway!”

The fact that they no longer work together does not prevent the trio, who remain good friends, from mercilessly taking the mickey out of each other. James, for instance, takes great pleasure in mocking Richard’s current occupation, running a workshop in Herefordshire where he repairs classic cars. “I’ve been in his workshop. In fact, they’re currently restoring my Triumph Stag there. Basically, Richard Hammond’s workshop has become a charity, and I’m one of the donors. Jeremy took a tractor there as well, and apparently, it still works. How about that?”

James’ wry sense of humour is apparent in his description of the gifts he receives from fans. “I get lots of bottles of beer, packets of sweets and tins of spam. Who needs anything else? People clearly think I must be starving and if they didn’t bring me this stuff, I’d simply fade away. 

“It’s great, though. I haven’t had to buy any spam for the last five years. In a post-apocalyptic world, I’d be well sorted. I even got a spam T-shirt from a fan. It shows they care!”

Since finishing The Grand Tour, James has been far from idle. In fact, he has never been busier. He was meant to have a trial run at retirement this year, but has ended up doing more than ever.

As well as running a gin business and a pub, more of which to follow, and touring the country with a live show, he has been making a new series for Quest entitled James May’s Shed Load of Ideas. In the programme, he mends friends’ beloved objects such as a vintage train set and an antique wind-up toy boat. He also comes up with ingenious solutions to problems. 

For instance, the presenter tackles the tyranny of traffic wardens who wrongly issue parking tickets with an innovative device constructed in his Wiltshire workshop.

James is also appalled that buying a new chip-making machine for his pub will cost him £450. So he invents a new way of making chips by firing potatoes out of a cannon at a fixed tennis racket. This method, he assures us, will be cheap as chips.

The presenter, who has also fronted such “how-to” programmes as Toy Stories, Man Lab, The Reassembler, and Oh Cook!, says he really enjoyed building this Heath Robinson-esque contraption. He is never happier than when he is tinkering in his workshop. But he was not so sure about the end product. “It’s fine, as long as you don’t mind a bit of grass in your chips. I didn’t particularly like it. But it’s not harmful. Cows eat grass. So ultimately, we eat grass.”

James May’s Shed Load of Ideas also highlights the importance of sheds as havens from the stresses and strains of daily life and as crucibles of creativity. 

According to James, who divides his time between homes in West London and Wiltshire, “All the best things in history came out of a shed of some sort, like the airplane and the bicycle and various computers. Jesus came out of a shed, too.  

“We’re not really quite sure what the manger was. If you go to Bethlehem, it would appear to be a cave. It probably was a cave, but it might have been a wooden out-building. It could have been a lean-to, but it still fits the broad definition of a shed, a special place where people make important things happen.”

The other enterprise that is occupying a lot of James’s time at the moment is his pub, The Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire. It is evidently a labour of love. “We’ve owned it now for five years. We’ve never taken any money out of it, we’ve only ever put money in. 

“So running a pub has to be seen as a charitable act or a service to the community. Pubs are a bit like Victorian follies in people’s gardens. You have to have them because you love them. There are no other reasons.”

James continues: “People quite often come up to me and say, ‘Oh, thank God, you bought the pub and we’ve still got it’. Not everything has to be about making a profit. It can be about the warm feeling you get. And I do get quite a warm feeling from thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I own a pub, and that’s what everybody secretly wants to do’. I describe owning the pub as really just a very expensive round. I still go to the pub, which I did before I owned it. It’s the same pub. It’s just that I have to pay a load of money for the privilege of continuing to go there.”

What’s next for James, then? He harbours a perhaps surprising ambition to open an animal sanctuary on his property in Wiltshire. “There are plenty of places that will give you donkeys and goats. There are lots that need rehoming, but you’re supposed to have them in pairs because they don’t like being on their own. 

“So you need to get two donkeys and two goats, and then before you know it, you’ve also got a couple of dogs and a couple of cats and suddenly your life just becomes looking after animals.”

The presenter has even contemplated making a documentary about his potential animal sanctuary. “The problem is, the series would run for one or two seasons. Then it would stop, and you’d be left with all these animals. You can’t take them down the scrap yard like you can with cars. They are for life, and it would be an enormous burden.”

Before we part, James returns to a favourite subject: men’s love of tools. “Most blokes who come up and talk to me about James May’s Shed Load of Ideas want to discuss things like my lathe or power tools!

“I suspect the show’s appeal is because it’s some blokes doing what blokes secretly want to do, which is muck about with tools in a workshop.”

He says the documentary underlines the truth of Richard’s dictum that all men need in life is “tools and booze”. 

“When I think about my life, I’m one of those people who’s got lots of hobbies,” he says. “I don’t do any of them particularly well, and I slightly despise myself for that. But I do spend quite a lot of my time fiddling around with tools and drinking my own gin. So my life is probably 70% tools and booze.” 

So, through gritted teeth, James has to admit, “Hammond is right. He’s very philosophical every once in a while.” Reminding us that he is never very far away from the next joke at his former colleagues’ expense, James adds: “Most of the time, Hammond is an idiot. But very occasionally, he comes out with something good!”

James May’s Shed Load Of ideas is on Quest at 9pm on Tuesdays