Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond kicked off their new BBC2 series in Romania.

When they went to rural areas, Clarkson put on a pork pie-style hat and talked of entering “Borat country”, a reference to Sacha Baron Cohen’s film about the fictional Kazakhstan television presenter. During the film, broadcast last week, Clarkson said: ‘‘I’m wearing this hat so the gypsies think I am one. I’m told they can be violent if they don’t like the look of you.”

When he sees locals building a house he jokes they are building “gallows”. Romania will soon mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, shot dead by a firing squad on Christmas Day 1989.