When it became obvious that Richard Hammond, James May and I were going to carry on making a car show, I knew only one thing for sure. It would not be based in a hangar, on a former RAF airfield, in the British countryside.

Twelve years earlier, the producer Andy Wilman and I had been to the BBC and sold them the idea of hosting just such a car show from just such an airfield. They liked the plan and the two of us were charged with the task of finding one. And frankly, we’d have had more options in 1940.

Time and again, we’d identify a site only to be told that the RAF still needed it for, er, glider training, or its annual