Top Gear topped by original team assembling a box

A YouTube video of former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson assembling a box has been watched more than a million times since it was posted two days ago, more than doubling the combined views of anything published on the show’s highly polished official channel in the past week.

The video which appears on James May’s own YouTube channel shows Clarkson on an office floor attempting to put together a DHL flatpack box while his ex-Top Gear colleagues Richard Hammond and May ridicule him.

Viewer comments are just as hilarious as Clarkson’s struggle to work out how the box folds together.

Uploaded to the video site on June 6, 2016 the three minute video of Clarkson and the box was getting more than 80,000 views per hour as it approached the million mark. Viewer comments are just as hilarious as Clarkson’s struggle to work out how the box folds together.

Meanwhile the most number of views any video of the new Top Gear team has managed to accrue is 2,664,467 for the initial series trailer two months ago.

That this is the best the new crew can do even with the hype surrounding the debut show and the resources of the BBC while the Clarkson box clip was filmed on a phone proves that it’s the power of personality that pulls the crowds.  

The opening of the new Top Gear hosted by Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc on May 30 received the lowest ratings in a decade with an average of 4.4 million, and viewers calling for the return of Hammond, May and Clarkson.

Read our review of the first episode of the new-era Top Gear.

The box clip is just one of many James May has posted on his YouTube channel JM’s Unemployment Tube which he started days after his Top Gear contract wasn’t renewed in 2015. Other clips include May making a shepherd’s pie and playing Greensleeves while hungover on the recorder.

The three former Top Gear presenters will host a new motoring show called The Grand Tour due to air on Amazon towards the end of this year.

Has the BBC made a huge mistake with its new Top Gear crew? Let us know in the comments below.