Top Gear Live, Newcastle Metro Radio Arena

At times unkempt, often embarrassing and nearly always offensive, either by design or by accident, Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May are unlikely cult heroes.

In fact, were they to turn up, as yet undiscovered, outside the BBC HQ it’s unlikely they’d be let past security these days, nevermind given their own TV show.

Thankfully, they have become so much part of the furniture, that like politically incorrect limpets, they are proving impossible to shift from their petrol-headed pedestal.

Top Gear Live requires little explanation. It’s Top Gear, but live.

The guys talk about cars, show us jaw-droppingly expensive machinery, race each other in some ridiculous contraption or other and insult a few nations, individuals and the Daily Mail.

High art it is not.

There is undoubted skill on show and moments that are truly awe-inspiring – seven motorcyclists in the ‘salad shaker of death’, drifting cars adorned in neon lights and an almost balletic performance from Darlington stunt driver Paul Swift and his backwards driven Ford Fiestas – but it’s motoring’s answer to Compo, Foggy and Clegg that the crowd has really come to see.

Clearly scripted, you couldn’t do several shows a day resting on your ability to ad-lib alone, they nevertheless manage to convince us they are just three blokes having a laugh down the pub.

They’re not breaking new ground here. We’ve seen and heard a lot of it before, or at least versions of it - Clarkson the bullying oaf, May the doddery dullard and Hammond the playful puppy.

But despite this, or perhaps because of it, they continue to hold a special place in our hearts.

We laugh when they ‘accidentally’ turn over their Robin Reliants during a three wheeler race, we laugh when James May can’t drive fast enough to beat a woman in a pair of trainers and we laugh when Clarkson says ‘plums’.

We are easy to entertain and we like it that way.

Matt Westcott