Top Gear was one of the BBC’s cash cows, and they must be desperate for it to reclaim its status.
“The big picture, for me, having grown up with Top Gear, is that it was loved,” Harris says.
The old criticism of Top Gear was that it was a dinosaur: three white men talking about cars, interspersed banter and racism, dad jokes and granddad jokes.
On paper at least, both McGuinness and Flintoff satisfy the requirement of being broadly popular and blokey without being toxic.