For the past month or so rumours of a so-called Grand Tour Christmas Special have been doing the rounds. But what are the odds of us actually seeing one during the festive season? Well if I were a betting man, I’d take my money and run.

Now before we start, I know. In an article I published on TopGearbox late last month, I bought into the whole idea of a separate Grand Tour Christmas special appearing in December, before the official launch of The Grand Tour Series 3 in January. I even suggested that The Grand Tour team would probably release the highly-anticipated Colombia Special as a sort of holiday season road trip… but I’m afraid I’ll have to eat my words. That simply isn’t going to happen – and here’s why.

I’ve been reporting on Top Gear, and more recently The Grand Tour, on TopGearbox.com for over 10 years now – and as such, various pieces of information for these shows will inevitably slide across my desk a few weeks or even months before public release. Things I can’t talk about. At least not yet.

But perhaps more tellingly, there’s one thing I’m not hearing about – and that is anything at all relating to the existence of The Grand Tour Christmas Special. And with Christmas being less than a week away, this is not a good sign at all. So what does it mean?

Well, the way I see it there are two possible outcomes:

There will not be a Grand Tour Christmas Special this year, OR; A Grand Tour Christmas Special might surprise us all and explode onto our screens next week

My money is currently on the first outcome, with the second pretty much not going to happen. I mean, even if we do somehow see a Grand Tour Christmas Special released this festive season, it definitely won’t be the Colombia Special. You’ll just have to trust me on that one.

But regardless of what actually transpires, you can at least take comfort in the fact that we’re less than a month away from the launch of The Grand Tour Series 3 on January 18th 2019. There will be at least 12 episodes in the series, and I’m sure they’ll all be excellent. It’ll also be the last series of the show to feature the Grand Tour tent, studio segments such as Conversation Street and possible the use of the Eboladrome – after Amazon confirmed that Series 4 will focus purely on the epic road trips we all know and love.

So if you were holding your breath for The Grand Tour Christmas Special, if I were you I’d probably start breathing again. But the good news here is we haven’t got long to wait anyway, until Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are back on our screens next year.