Former Top Gear host James May has said the BBC show's controversial decision to film near the Cenotaph war memorial in London was "probably a bit ill-judged".
Earlier this month new Top Gear presenter Matt LeBlanc and a professional driver were seen driving around Westminster as filming took place for the new series of the BBC Two hit, which is due to air in May. Large tyre circles were left on the streets surrounding the war memorial after the stunt, which provoked an outcry.
The BBC subsequently said that the controversial footage would not be shown on television. The broadcaster stressed that "at no point" was the Cenotaph set to appear in the footage.
LeBlanc filming the footage Photo: Matt LeBlanc, Twitter
Le-Blanc's co-host Chris Evans said he "completely understood the furore" and admitted it had been "unwise" to film anywhere near the Cenotaph.
Now former presenter May has weighed in on the controversy in an interview to be published in British newspaper The Guardian's MediaGuardian section on Easter Monday.
"I have driven up and down that road, yes, but no, I don't do doughnuts - it's inappropriate wherever you do it in my view," he says.
"It was possibly a little unwise, ill-advised," adds May, who will debut his new Amazon video-on-demand show with Top Gear's other former presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond in the Autumn.
The new series came about after Clarkson was sacked by the BBC for assaulting Top Gear's Irish producer Oisín Tymon last March. Following Clarkson's sacking, he, May and Hammond agreed a deal with Amazon Prime in the summer of 2015.
L-R Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson
In The Guardian interview, May says fans should not expect the Top Gear format from the as-yet-untitled Amazon Prime show.
"We are not a studio-centred thing anymore," he explains. "We are making a series of TV films and we don't have a base."
The 53-year-old describes the series as "massively expensive".
"We are doing more episodes than we did in the latter days of Top Gear. It is quite intense," he says.
However, May adds that figures quoted about the cost of the series have been inaccurate.
"The figures aren't right and anyway they don't give us a great big bag of money and say, 'Here's your money, go off and spend it'. They give it to us bits at a time."
May will also be back on the BBC in the future, fronting a three-part BBC Four series where he fixes things in a workshop, James May: The Reassembler.
