James May did a Q&A session via his book publisher and Twitter yesterday. I thought you might find it interesting:

Q: RT @TopGearBabe: With so many fabulous adventures under his belt so far… are there any achievable dreams left unfulfilled for James?
A: Oh god, yes. I’d like to go to the Moon and I’d like to be able to make a risotto.

Q: RT @beckstar2: please ask James May what book he would take to a desert island
A: The Haynes Manual for the Honda CB 754

Q: RT @ChicklitBlog: If you could put a car into a time capsule for future generations to marvel at, which would it be and why?
A: Crikey, that’s a good question. I think the Ford Escort Mark 1, it’s what cars are meant to be.

Q: RT @maxtortheone: Please ask James May what impressions [removed due to spoilers, see forums for question] left him when he visited a couple of months ago!
A: It was much prettier than we expected, a very hospitable country. Lots of dogs.

Q: RT @LindenChase: What did James think of [removed] (where he’s just been filming with TopGear)? How bad was his vertigo?
A: The thing I remember most about [removed] is the dust, I don’t like dust. It gets in the air vents.
A: My vertigo is pretty bad everywhere, even up a 5 storey building, so in parts of [removed] it was very bad.

Q: RT @Intheskieswith: Does James May have a favourite novel or author?
A: When I was 18 I read Free Fall by William Golding and thought ‘this is about me, it’s going to change my life’ but that’s probably rubbish
A: I also like Cecil Lewis’s Sagittarius Rising. If you want something erudite and easy to read, Car Fever is an excellent book.

Jeremy Clarkson’s latest DVD Duel came out today and is now on sale in the UK. I assume it will be on sale here in the US at a later date.

It’s been a busy couple of days — first rumors of Fifth Gear getting canceled and now multiple reports that Australia’s Channel Nine has gained the rights from the BBC to do the show instead of SBS.

Rumor is that Shane Warne is being talked to to host the show as well as Jeremy Clarkson, although I have no idea how that would work.

We’ll let you know as the news comes in and thanks to everyone who sent in tips.

Top Gear Live is touring again this year. Here’s the locations for 2009/2010:

• London, Earls Court 5-8 Nov 2009
• Birmingham, NEC 12-15 Nov 2009
• Dublin, RDS Simmonscourt 3-6 Dec 2009
• Amsterdam, tbc 21-24 Jan 2010
• Cape Town, The Grand Arena at Grand West 28-31 Jan 2010
• Johannesburg, Coca Cola Dome 4-7 Feb 2010
• Sydney, Acer Arena 11-14 Feb 2010
• Auckland, ASB Showgrounds 18-21 2010
• Hong Kong, tbc

If one is anywhere near you, I’d recommend looking into attending. I’ve never been myself (nearest one is on the opposite side of the world from me), but from the photos and videos I’ve seen from previous years, it looks to be quite a spectacle.

On the BBC’s Internet Blog’s post about Top Gear airing in HD this fall, the author mentioned the start date as being November 15th. Is it true? It’s hard to be sure as usually we don’t know this far out, but it sounds right (they’ve been saying mid-November all along). So assuming she’s correct, that’s just 53 days to go!

Unlike last time, it is now official that the next season of Top Gear will be in HD!

That means all the races, supercars sliding from left to right of your telly screens and the boys’ comedic adventure, all in crystal clarity.

As Jeremy said a few weeks’ back, filming is well underway on Series 14 and if all goes to plan it’ll be on your screens by mid-November.

We’ll be doing our best to provide 700MB (SD), 720p, and 1080p rips for each episode. The HD rips will likely take a bit longer to release though, so don’t expect them as quickly as we release the current resolution rips.

I realized I never made a single torrent for Top Gear season 13, so I’ve done so now. If you’ve yet to watch season 13 (what in the world were you thinking?!), then you can easily download it right now.

As always, if you don’t wish to download the entire season, see our FAQ for details on how to selectively download certain files from within a torrent.

If you don’t subscribe to the Top Gear newsletter or missed the latest issue, here’s some outtakes from the latest season of Top Gear.

• Richard and James hitting their head on the camera mount from their Royal Mail race
• Jeremy and his Spanish co-driver attempting to communicate during the classic car rally
• James attempting to hide his frustration with his co-driver and her inability to read a map during the classic car rally
• James’ full song about the VW Scirocco for his TV commercial

UPDATE: I forgot that I have a Greasemonkey script in my browser that removes the region blocking from the TopGear.com videos. You can find YouTube versions of the videos in this forum post.

From the Top Gear blog:

Here’s something for the proper Top Gear fan — our executive producer Andy Wilman at the Edinburgh Festival talking about the telly show.

It was a Five Live interview with newsreader (and former Star in a Reasonably Priced Car) Kate Silverton, covering searching topics such as secrets to the success of the show and why men like sheds.

At 13 minutes, it’s a decently long interview and is worth listening to. You can download the interview or stream it here:

You may or may not remember that Porsche shooting brake mule video that surfaced on TopGear.com in early July:

It was picked up by various websites, including Jalopnik. Well, turns out it was all a hoax as a sort of going away present from the TopGear.com American editorial staff before they got let go. Pretty damn good (but not perfect) hoax if you ask me.

You can read more about how they did it at the NY Times and Jalopnik.

Well done guys.