The Grand Tour Was Almost Called “Nigel”

One of the great questions to be answered before The Grand Tour came out was what it was going to be called. There was speculation that it might be something silly like Gear Knobs, but apparently, it was almost even sillier: Nigel. 

It's true. The Grand Tour was going to be called Nigel.
It was my youngest daughter's idea.

— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) January 3, 2018

Jeremy Clarkson tweeted this morning that his younger daughter had the idea of simply calling the show Nigel, presumably to confuse BBC viewers into watching it thinking it was a new morning chat show.

This explains why, during the Grand Tour Awards last week, the awards were called Nigels despite the name Nigel having absolutely zip to do with the show. I thought this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Academy Awards being called Oscars, despite not being invented by anybody named Oscar. But apparently, they actually got far enough with the name Nigel to make awards with “Nigel” written on them.

I’m thankful for the name they did choose, although it would have been funny to someday hear “Next on Dave: Nigel!“