As you may have heard, the BBC has taken my gun and my badge, and I must admit it’s all been a bit of a shock. For more than 12 years Top Gear has been my life, completely. It was an all-consuming entity, a many-tentacled global monster that was dysfunctional and awkward and mad but I loved it with a passion. I loved it like my own child. Which in many ways it was. But then, one day, I read in Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed and that they were going to give my baby to someone else.

I felt sick because after I’d lost my home and my mother, I’d thrown myself even more vigorously into my