James May is awesome - FACT

[Richie]

he's a genius.

Originally Posted by Richie

In an interview with Richard Allinson on BBC Radio 2, May confessed that he was fired in 1992 from Autocar 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 reviews and each review started with a large, red letter. May's role was to put the entire 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 texts, 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 ****". 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.

May's original message, punctuated appropriately, reads: "So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It's a real pain in the ****.





I'm a James May fan, and I'm not afraid to say it so public.

According to an ex-employee in my office who used to work at Autocar at the same time as him, he was an arrogant stroppy git- was incredibly rude and demanding to other staff and expected to be treated preferentially and when he got news of his employment on Top Gear, demanded an inflated salary at Autocar for his notice period.

You can imagine what they said to that, can't you?

So apart from being entertaining on telly, clearly well educated and quite possibly quite intelligent too (they're not the same), he might actually be a bit of a c**k (I say might- obviously the info I've got is gossip and 3rd hand)

no doubt.....he's the man..
anyone see him on fri night with jonathan ross?..when explaining things he just couldn't help going into things that seemed like great detail to most people - but to him he was prob just quickly trying to summarise things up for most the viewers - clever chap!

Ah no- the real trick is explaining something complicated to someone that seems in the end clear and simple to the listener.

Anyone who knows a subject well can go off into detail about it that is baffing to the uninitiated. The really clever ones understand an outsiders lack of knowledge and can get the message across in layman's terms...

And of course, the real skill is knowing at which point the listener stops listening!

JAMES MAY IS NOT AWESOME!!!! -FACT*

I am working on this TV series for him, not the lego house but another crazy idea he's had.
Our little project has gone massively over time, and probably budget too. It has cost me so much of my own money and time in what is supposed to be my last ever summer holiday having finished my masters!

James has had 4 other silly ideas too, you may have already heard about the plastacine garden, that will be in the series too.

If anyone is around liverpool on the 8th of Aug, I believe our project will be a public event that day, should be quite exciting.

*Actually, he's not that bad, quite a nice bloke in person, just needs to stop inflicting his crazy ideas on innocent people!

has anyone used the words pompous or fatuous yet?

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by custard

has anyone used the words pompous or fatuous yet?

We discussed Clarkson back on page one...

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

We discussed Clarkson back on page one...

my bad, will read the rest of it.

James may is a LEG-end!. I watched the oz and may's drink to Britain which was ace

Long live May!

Originally Posted by thedonal

Ah no- the real trick is explaining something complicated to someone that seems in the end clear and simple to the listener.

Anyone who knows a subject well can go off into detail about it that is baffing to the uninitiated. The really clever ones understand an outsiders lack of knowledge and can get the message across in layman's terms...

And of course, the real skill is knowing at which point the listener stops listening!

You must be an IT consultant!?