Fantasy


For a long time I was in love with the idea of them, with the sight of them, the sounds they made. Like a finely tuned car - and although I've never really understood the attraction of metal against metal - the noise of them; as exciting and arousing in a way nothing else was.

Always physical with one another, it was difficult to tell where the friendship ended and the affair began. The first time I realised something was going we were embroiled once again in the fun and games that was one of the infamous Top Gear challenges. My Nissan had broken down, we were tucked around the back of a garage forecourt, the cameras all trained on me. I could hear them laughing, thought maybe it was at my expense, looked up in time to see Jeremy sweep Richard up with one arm and dump him on the bonnet of his ratty Toyota.

Not in itself a tell-tale move, but the way he did it - the curve of his hand around Richard's waist, the single moment of lingering over the shorter man on the car.... I'm not usually that observant when it comes to body language, but Richard talks so much rubbish that it's easier to read what his body's saying than to listen to his words. And Jeremy reacts to him in ways I don't think he's even aware of. Even before it started.

But there's a long gap between suspecting and knowing. I didn't deliberately spy on them, I just kept being distracted by them. For the first time that I realised I could remember, Richard looked happy off camera. He laughed more, and the casual touches between he and Jeremy made him giggle like a ticklish teenager or one of his zillions of pre-pubsecent fans. What they'd make of it, I didn't ever want to know. But secretly I'd have loved to tell just one of them, just to see the expression on her spotty, peroxide-framed face.

Something else changed too. Richard isn't a 'hearts and flowers' man, and where there's passion for him, it swings both ways. Their arguments took on an edge of violence that was as darkly erotic as it was slightly scary.

Other people noticed it, mentioned it, and I shrugged it off - put it down to rivallry between a successful but aging media journalist and his high-flying protege. But in reality it was so much more.

A couple of weeks passed and it dawned on me one morning that I was waiting for something, and I knew what it was. I even knew what to look for. I saw it one Wednesday at Dunsfold, around two months after we filmed the Japanese-Made Cars for Under £500 challenge.

Richard's cautious movements, not those of a man in pain exactly, but definitely a man taking care not to aggravate a certain part of his anatomy. And the closing of the physical gap between them; Richard moving easily into Jeremy's personal space and vice-versa, comfortable with one another and making no attempt to hide it. Who would believe it?

Two distinct pieces of evidence that finally Jeremy had fucked Richard - literally this time. And I was jealous.

I'd never loved Richard. For a long time I didn't even like him. But the moment I realised Jeremy had him in a way I didn't, that green eyed monster had started to grow. By that Wednesday it was the size of the entire cast of a child's nightmare. It was keeping me awake at night and distracting me from everything I tried to focus on.

What I didn't realise, until one Friday afternoon in the Top Gear London office, was that my arguments with Richard had been getting progressively more forceful too. It started off being about Porsches - it usually does with us - and escalated into a battle that the staff were starting to back away from. I stormed out, he came after me, and standing on the pavement in the centre of the capital we pissed ourselves laughing before heading to the pub.

Over the first pint, he said to me, "This is how it started with Jeremy too."

Don't ask me how we got from there into bed. Richard had already made up his mind and I wasn't about to fight him on it, for once. We shared a taxi back to my place without discussing it and I didn't have to invite him in - he invited himself.

At one point, when all I could feel was his naked body along the length of my own, I had the inticing thought that I was holding something of Jeremy's, something he really loved, and it was as arousing as Richard's physical presence.

In the morning he asked me, "Was it better because you know I'm sleeping with Jeremy?" He's not as stupid as he makes out.

I told him the truth. Not better - but maybe more intense.

"Would it have been even more intense if Jeremy had been here?"


For a long time I was in love with the idea of them. Now I'm in love with the sights, the sounds, the smell of them as we lie twisted together in the dark of my bedroom and there is a forbidden intensity that's blown my life apart and reassembled it in a way I don't even recognise.

But it's good. It's great. Who knew it could ever be like that?