Former Top Gear host Chris Evans came under fire for a number of things during his brief time in the driving seat – his shouting, his running around, his puking after high-speed track laps – and his sartorial choices also got a bashing. Namely because he wore a bright yellow T-shirt under a black jumper in pretty much every episode (eagle-eyed screen-grabbers have found one episode where it was white instead).


But what was with the obsession with yellow jerseys? Did Evans perhaps fancy himself as a Tour de France contender? Well, no. We’ve now learned the real reason: it’s Evans’s “lucky” T-shirt. Well, lucky batch of T-shirts…

“It’s a ‘CarFest’ T-shirt, he’s got about twenty of them,” a source told RadioTimes.com, referencing the annual motoring show Evans founded in 2012, which raises money for Children In Need.

“He wears them for luck.”

In the past, the lucky tees have generally worked well for him. Evans can be seen here sporting said shirt on TFI Friday, a show he’s earned warm praise for in the main.

And taking over from Jeremy Clarkson et al, you’d want all the luck you could get. But given recent events, it seems the good fortune has been washed out of Evans’s beloved T-shirts.

After just one series of Top Gear, Evans announced he was “stepping down”, describing his departure from the presenting team as being the “single best thing I can do now” as ratings, and the revamped show’s reputation, struggled. We understand he leaves the rest of the presenting team to go on without him – with Matt LeBlanc seemingly primed to run things – with no replacement for the Radio 2 DJ expected.


Evans has vowed to go “full steam ahead” with the rest of his projects, including CarFest, which takes place in Cheshire at the end of this month and in Hampshire at the end of August. Here’s hoping he’s found some lucky pants for that instead.