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Jeremy Clarkson has denied trying to "scupper" Chris Evans' attempts to revive Top Gear - because to do so would hit him in the pocket.

The presenter, who was sacked from the BBC show last year for hitting his producer in a row over hot food, said that he still gets paid every time the show is recommissioned.

He said tonight in a talk in central London: "What's very entertaining is that Chris Evans is having a very hard time at the moment as he attempts to put Top Gear back together again.

"It's been suggested that I am behind it, that I am trying to scupper him. But I discovered the other day that every time it gets recommissioned I get paid, so that's a curious bit of BBC contract but I wish them all the very best."

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(Image: BBC)

Clarkson , who said he "walked away with a lot more than £14million" after leaving the show said he was now glad his time on Top Gear had come to an end.

He said: "To be honest, I think we would have stayed at the BBC and then the show would have got tired and boring, eventually we would have piloted it into a hillside and that would have been the end.

"At the time it was all tragic but now we've been forced to reinvent ourselves and we're online, where you can do anything, like f *** a horse, it's forced all of us to actually concentrate on starting again.

"Now we're looking at losing Top Gear as a fantastic thing to happen."

(Image: WENN) (Image: Amazon/PA)

Clarkson, who has since signed a big money deal with Amazon to do a rival motoring show with his former Top Gear colleagues Richard Hammond and James May, said they only had a week to come up with a new name.

"We've got seven days to come up with a name - we do a special every year for Christmas and we go to film that soon, so we have to have a name and register it by then.

"It's going to end up being called Dingleberries or something like that."

And he admitted ratings would not be as high as when he was on the BBC.

Read more:Chris Evans defends "hero" Jeremy Clarkson and says Top Gear sacking was ''bizarre''

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"Piers Morgan said we would have 100,000 viewers but I don't think it will be that high," Clarkson said.

"Amazon Prime is relatively small in the UK so we're not going to have huge figures.

"They have two million subscribers and then there's a lot more than that in America, but the point of us going along there is to batter doors down and more people will sign up and then more people will watch us."

Clarkson also fanned the flames of his row with Argentina after being attacked while filming in the country for Top Gear, when he was accused of driving a car displaying offensive number plates referencing the Falklands War.

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"I knew the s*** would hit the fan, they are just a bolshy bunch of war losing b*****d w ******* .

"If I ever go back there again the number plate will be W3 W0N - we won. I've got no time for it."

He also blasted former BBC boss Danny Cohen, with whom he had a series of run-ins with while at the Corporation.

Clarkson said: "Danny Cohen left the BBC because he had a number of different jobs he had to look into - well, six months later he's still looking."

He said the BBC was badly run but still capable of brilliant programming.

"It's very top heavy, there's far too many tiers of management, they are obsessed with quotas and political correctness. But it does churn out some astonishingly good programmes from time to time."