James May has once again received plenty of positive reviews for his latest travel series, Our Man In Italy, as he tours the beautiful country for our viewing pleasure. While The Grand Tour presenter was supposed to be visiting America instead, this had to be changed because of the pandemic, but May was pleased to be in a country with amazing food and wine.
He talked to Express about this, admitting that this excess of food became a challenge to him.
“The trouble is a combination of three things,” James noted. “The food in Italy is very nice, two, there is always tonnes of it wherever you go, and they talk about it constantly.
“That is a cliche, but it’s a perfectly valid one…and the third one is when I was at home, especially over the pandemic period and so on, I did quite a lot of exercise and I’d go cycling every day.
“Once we’d got to Italy, I did take a folding bike with me but I didn’t get that much [of a] chance to ride it so I did about a 20th of the exercise I’d normally be doing.
“Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I did get a bit tubby towards the end and I still am.”
On top of this, James added that the director of the show forced him to do a number of challenges for entertainment purposes. He was asked if this was true, in which he answered:
“Oh, god yeah all the time.
“I always say ‘I’d like to do this, this and this’ and they rather begrudgingly allow me to do those things, but then the crew and producers come up with some surprises.
“It just makes better tele if I don’t know what is coming up.
“If I was left to my own devices I would do craft, art, I’d look at some famous buildings and I would explore some spas.”
He continued saying that him being out of his comfort zone results in a better show:
“The crew and producers basically want me to be uncomfortable, dress, up have a terrible time and hurt myself.”
Despite this, it wasn’t all plain sailing for the presenter, who described the filming in Italy as “chaotic” because of how brilliantly disorganised the country is:
“Well, to be honest, it’s all a bit chaotic, because it’s Italy…that’s another cliche but they will be the first to acknowledge it,” he said: “Italy has a sort of level of disorganisation, but it all works.”
If you haven’t already seen Our Man In Italy, James has given insight into part of a show where he gives in to the meme and makes cheese:
“I make my own cheese starting with the goat and milking it.
“For some reason, anything to do with cheese always causes a massive argument.
“The most embarrassing thing would be canoe polo because I don’t fit in the canoe,” James joked.
“I’ve only ever paddled a canoe twice in my life and that was many years ago and I didn’t really fit and I was playing against a lot of 18 and 19-year-old women.”
Alex started racing at a young age so certainly knows his way around a car and a track. He can just about put a sentence together too, which helps.
He has a great interest in the latest models, but would throw all of his money at a rusty old French classic and a 300ZX.
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