Jeremy Clarkson held at gun point while filming Top Gear (Picture: Rex/Shutterstock, WENN)

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he was held up with machine gun to his head while filming Top Gear in Detroit back in 1997.

The 58-year-old recalled accidentally finding himself on a gang’s stomping ground and subsequently falling into a ‘nasty’ situation, which sounds like the understatement of the millennium to us.

‘Somebody held a gun against my head in Detroit,’ he told The Mirror. ‘It’s a long, complicated story but we were trying to do some filming and some people thought we were trespassing on their turf.’

He added: ‘It was pretty nasty.’


Jeremy will be returning to Detroit in the third series of The Grand Tour (Picture: PA)

An insider elaborated: ‘Jeremy was filming Top Gear in a ruined railway station but was warned by cops not to go inside as there were warring gang factions operating. But he ignored the advice.’



Thankfully, The Grand Tour host managed to ‘talk his way out’ of the ordeal.

Jeremy will return to Detroit for the very first episode of The Grand Tour’s third series, this time alongside Richard Hammond and James May.

The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? quizmaster still calls the city ‘dangerous’.

‘I’m sure if you actually lived there you wouldn’t call it interesting, you’d call it dangerous,’ he said. ‘But the chrome shoots of rejuvenation are growing again so you can actually eat quite well there.

‘You can stay in a nice hotel, you can go short distances from A to B without being shot.’

Jeremy presented Top Gear from 1998 to 2000 before the motoring show was revamped in 2002 with a new line up.

He famously resigned from the BBC after a physical altercation with a producer over a steak, and didn’t manage to talk his way out of that one. Until Amazon Prime came along and threw a reported £160 million at The Grand Tour.

The Grand Tour returns to Amazon Prime on January 18.

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