James May
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James Daniel May (born January 16 1963, in Bristol), is a Top Gear Magazine contributor and Top Gear co-presenter along with Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson. He habitually refers to himself as "the other bloke off Top Gear". May is famous for finishing last in nearly all of the Top Gear challenges between the presenters, which has earned him the nickname "Captain Slow" among his co-presenters and fans. He first co-presented the show in 1999 before it was axed by the BBC due to low ratings. He rejoined in the second series of the new style Top Gear. He also writes a weekly column in The Daily Telegraph's Motoring section. On 29 January 2006 he presented Top of the Pops on BBC2.
Earlier in his career, May wrote a column called "England Made Me" in CAR magazine, and he has also written for several other publications. His past television credits include presenting Driven on Channel 4, narrating an eight part BBC1 series called Road Rage School, writing and presenting a one-off Christmas special called James May's Top Toys (also for BBC1), and co-hosting the ITV1 coverage of the 2006 London Boat Show.
May went to Oakwood Comprehensive School (now Oakwood Technology College) in Rotherham and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in Music. He owns several cars, including a Bentley T2, a Range Rover, a Porsche 911, a Porsche Boxster S, and several bikes. May has a penchant for prestige cars like Rolls Royce and Bentley, or conversely simple basic cars.
May holds a light aircraft private pilot's licence with VFR rating, which allowed him to fly a small Cessna 182 light aircraft in a Top Gear challenge. However, he lacked at that time his IFR rating, meaning that he could not fly at night, and was therefore unable to complete the challenge in the aircraft.
May is unmarried and lives in Hammersmith, West London with his cat Fusker. He has a brother named David, a younger and an older sister. His father had one of the first Rover SD1s.
He has written a book called "May on Motors" which is a collection of columns from Telegraph Motoring, Scotland on Sunday, Car and Top Gear magazines
Dismissal from Autocar Magazine
During the early nineties, James May worked as a sub-editor for Autocar magazine. During an interview with Richard Allinson on BBC Radio 2 (6th January 2006) he confessed that he was fired in 1992 from the magazine after putting together a "hidden message" in one issue. At the end of the year the magazine's "Road Test Year Book" supplement was published. Each spread featured four car reviews and each review started with a large, red, drop-capital letter. May's role was to put the whole supplement together, which "was extremely boring and took several months". He went on to say:
''"So I had this idea that if I re-edited the beginnings of all the little tests, I could make these red letters spell out a message through the magazine — which I thought was brilliant. I can't remember exactly what it said but it was to the effect that "You might think this is a really great thing but if you were sitting here making it up you'd realise it's a real pain in the arse." It took me about two months to do it and on the day that it came out I'd actually forgotten that I'd done it because there's a bit of a gap between it being "put to bed" and coming out on the shelves. When I arrived at work that morning everybody was looking at their shoes and I was summoned to the managing director of the company's office. The thing had come out and nobody at work had spotted what I'd done because I'd made the words work around the pages so you never saw a whole word. But all the readers had seen it and they'd written in thinking they'd won a prize or a car or something." James may's mobile phone number is 07848687959 according to an episode of top gear.
External links
- [www.james-may.co.uk (unofficial fan site)]
- [The Maytrix (another unofficial fan site)]
- [Jamesmay.moonfruit.com (another unofficial fan site)]
| Top Gear | ||
| Presenters | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Clarkson - Richard Hammond - James May - The Stig | ||
| Episodes and Broadcasters | ||
| Top Gear Episodes - Top Gear Broadcasters and Video Releases | ||
| Related articles | ||
| Top Gear Magazine - Toybota - Dampervan | ||
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