“Were you really chased out of town by those American rednecks, or was it made up for the telly?”

That’s apparently the question asked a lot lately of Top Gear host Richard Hammond. It’s all in connection with one recent episode of the hit UK motoring show:

In the programme in question, we wanted to know if it was possible to buy a car and drive across a chunk of the USA for less money than the cost of traditional “fly-drive” schemes offered by holiday companies.

Rather foolishly the boys decided to paint slogans on the sides of their vehicles, rude/crude slogans that upset the Alabama locals enough to reach for their guns as The Times reports in an excerpt from Hammond’s forthcoming book, Or Is That Just Me?.

Back in 1993 I drove round California and Nevada in a beige 1977 Chevy Impala ‘cop car’ with ‘FBI’ marked on the doors with black electricians tape. We got some odd looks for that but no death threats!