The upcoming Zimbabwe special of The Grand Tour will undoubtedly mark the end of an era: the final show hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, who’ve been presenting automotive TV together since 2003.
Now, ahead of its expected debut in September, the TV production company co-founded by Clarkson, Hammond, May and their long-time producer, Andy Wilman is officially being wound up – although things aren’t quite that simple.
May, Clarkson and Hammond in The Grand Tour: Seamen
Documents filed with Companies House, the UK’s publicly-available listing of registered companies, show that a ‘special resolution to wind up’ was filed on 11 July for W Chump & Sons Limited, a company founded by the four in July 2015, around the time their deal with Amazon was announced. The resolution has been signed by Wilman.
Complicating things somewhat is the fact that this isn’t the only iteration of Chump & Sons, whose name appeared at the end of episodes of The Grand Tour. In addition to W. Chump & Sons Limited, there was W. Chump & Sons Productions Limited, which was created in August 2015 then dissolved in October 2017. A third company, Chump Productions Limited, was founded in October 2015 and ceased to exist in March 2021.
Clarkson, Hammond and May in The Grand Tour: Carnage A Trois
W. Chump & Sons Limited – the company currently being dissolved – and Chump Productions Limited both list Clarkson, Hammond, May and Wilman as directors, while W. Chump & Sons Productions only shows Wilman.
Regardless, the company that’s now being wound up is the one that’s existed for the longest, seemingly created around the time the Amazon deal was struck – shortly after Clarkson’s BBC contract wasn’t renewed following an incident in which he punched a Top Gear producer.
Hammond, May and Clarkson in The Grand Tour: Lochdown
It chimes with various comments from all three presenters recently, indicating that the trio likely won’t work together on TV again. May, for instance, told UniLad in, erm, May, that “I think people would only really like us doing cars, despite what some people say – ‘Oh, I think you should all go off and do cooking or you should all go and do a podcast about nothing’. But I don’t think so, I think we should let it lie, what we did.”
It appears to be another step, then, towards the closing of an era of 21 years’ worth of car TV fronted by the three. We hope the final episode will be a worthy send-off.
