I have met Jeremy Clarkson twice, both times at events connected with cars, and on neither occasion could you say it went well. The reason He was at these events is obvious, but it is not so well known that I, too, have been involved in motoring journalism for over three decades. For several years I had a regular column in Car magazine, then for a long period I wrote for the Independent and then the Telegraph on cars. On TV in the late 1990s I made a series called Drive, which was all about how to drive safely and is still shown on speed awareness courses all over the country. A woman who taught on one of those schemes told me recently that my show had definitely saved lives (though it also made a number of van drivers very angry with me). And – naturally – the documentary I did for BBC2’s Arena on the history of the Ford Cortina is still the most watched arts documentary ever shown on BBC 2. Perhaps.

The first time we met, Jeremy and I, was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2005. I was introduced to him by my friend Muriel Gray. “Hello,” I said. “How nice to meet you.” His reply was: “You called me a twat in 1992.” What a good memory he has. It was true, though I hadn’t actually called him a twat to his face – I’d done it on television, on his own programme. This was back in the really dark days of Top Gear, before the introduction of Hammond and May and the whole repackaging that turned the show into such a phenomenon.

Back then on Top Gear, there would be features such as a 20-minute segment on the acrylic carpet-lining in the Ford Orion presented by a bearded man wearing a gaudy short-sleeved shirt – and they would occasionally let me present bits of it too. I had recently bought a Rover 827 Coupe, partly on the basis of a favourable assessment by Clarkson in a newspaper. However, when he’d come to do his Top Gear review of the same car he was in a sudden funk as he realised Rovers were generally seen as uncool, so he proceeded to slag it off. I suggested to Andy Wilman, the producer, that I do a segment about this volte face, he enthusiastically agreed and at the end of my piece I called Jeremy what he said I called him.

The second time we met was quite recently, when we were both guests of Citroën UK in their box at the Emirates Stadium. Citroën is the official supplier of vans to Arsenal FC, so if Theo Walcott needs a Relay with a tipper body to do some bricklaying or Alexis Sanchez wants a Berlingo XTR+ to help a friend move a load of laminate flooring, they know where to go. On this occasion, Clarkson was extremely hungover because he’d been up all night at his daughter’s 18th birthday party, and he stared balefully at me with his little black eyes as if he’d like to subject me to a 30-minute harangue followed by a sound punching; though he was too hungover to speak, much less launch an attack, it was clear what was in his heart.

I was sad he’d held on to his grudge for so long: I had hoped that since Goodwood his view of me might have mellowed, as I was planning to tell him how much I admired what he’d done on Top Gear. I wanted to acknowledge how he and the rest of the team had turned the programme around, making what was, until a couple of years ago, a truly innovative show.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Happier times … Richard Hammond, the Stig, James May and Jeremy Clarkson launch the Top Gear Live world tour in 2009. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA Archive

It turned out to be fortuitous that I did not go up and praise him, as a week or two later came the “slope” incident during the Burma special, a lazy and deplorable piece of casual racism, something that would make any praise turn to ashes in the mouth. So “twat” remains the state of play between us.

My credentials to replace Clarkson are I hope clear but my application also comes with an innovative suggestion for how the succession might be managed. Many people have commented that it will be a trauma for the viewers to have all three presenters replaced in one go, so what I suggest to the BBC is that in a sense they don’t replace them. And I am just the person to help in this sleight of hand. I doubt there are any other motoring journalists who can claim to have appeared on the Corporation’s other great worldwide franchise, Doctor Who, but in 1985 I guest-starred in the two-parter Revelation of the Daleks. (Coincidentally – or not – this was in the period considered by many to be its lowest point. A year later when my Doctor, Colin Baker, left I made a clumsy attempt to replace him. The Sun actually ran a story announcing that I was to be the new Doctor: “It’s time for a Socialist in the Tardis,” I was quoted as saying. Sadly the BBC didn’t agree.)

But what I’m suggesting for Top Gear is that, as with Doctor Who, the lead character doesn’t ever leave – rather he simply “regenerates”. My proposal is that for the start of the next series they simply take some of the footage that’s already been shot with Jeremy, possibly from that fateful day in Yorkshire, but after a couple of minutes his image suddenly goes all weird and via the use of computer trickery and possibly a swooshing noise I would appear in his place – except I would not be known as Alexei Sayle, I would be called “Jeremy Clarkson”, and forever more whoever plays the role will be known as “Jeremy Clarkson”, even if they are hopefully one day non-white or a woman.

That still leaves one question: why should the new “Jeremy” be a Marxist? Well, one of the few things Top Gear was never accused of was being insufficiently Marxist, but nevertheless it was. Not just Top Gear, of course, but every single factual programme on British TV. Recently I was a judge on a panel reviewing arts documentaries for a major TV prize and it struck me that, while many of the films displayed great intelligence and passion, none of the artists or cities or artworks were considered within any sort of economic or class framework. Everything was seen as simply springing from individual inspiration unconnected to the economic nature of the society they inhabited. The last arts series that provided the viewer with anything other than the “single unconnected genius” theory of how art is made was probably John Berger’s Ways of Seeing back in 1972. Similarly, I found it astonishing that two of the most prominent programmes made to commemorate the beginning of the first world war last year were the products of rightwing historians: Max Hastings, who thought the war was essentially a good idea; and Niall Ferguson, who thought it was essentially a bad one. In both, the viewer was presented with a Downton Abbey-style version of the conflict shorn of any idea that class or economic self-interest might have had any part to play. This simplistic notion is best countered by Robert Newman, who once stated: “They say the first world war began because Archduke Ferdinand was shot. Nobody’s that popular!”

Which brings us to Top Gear. Roland Barthes, the French literary theorist, philosopher and critic, wrote in a 1957 essay about the new Citroën DS: “Cars today are the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals.” During the medieval era, the finest minds and artists were dedicated to what was at the centre of society, namely God; today it is consumerism, the insatiable desire for new and better products, and just as those great medieval places of worship were objects of wonder and awe, so the car now fulfils that function, expressing where we are as a society in terms of design, technology and aspiration. In the Top Gear studio the cars are objects of blind veneration, just like the statues of the saints in those medieval cathedrals. So what better place to reintroduce Marxist ideas than on a show dedicated to cars? Every single thing in the world can be revealed through a proper study of cars – fashion, economics, environment and politics – and I am the man to do it. And don’t worry: the show will still be full of its trademark irreverence – though its targets will now be the rich, the powerful and the reactionary, rather than Mexicans, the safety conscious and Morris Marina owners. Because I am not a dry or didactic Marxist; I am one of the fun ones.