Through the 1990s, Steve Berry was Top Gear’s main expert on motorcycles, working alongside the likes of Tiff Needell, Vicki Butler-Henderson and Jeremy Clarkson. But there was member of the team that Steve never really warmed to.

“Jeremy Clarkson and I never got along,” Steve told Al Arabiya News, adding that the the show’s best-known presenter was a “massive show-off and egotist”

He recalled his first meeting with Clarkson: “The first shoot that I went along on was presented by a certain Mr. Jeremy Clarkson. And I'll never forget this, he turned up two hours late.

"I turned up half an hour early because I wanted to impress. He turned up to hours late and the crew were fuming. Absolutely fuming, I thought. Right, make a point, don't do that because you want the crew on your side.”

Getting along with the crew had been a problem for Clarkson more than once. Top Gear’s golden age ended in 2015 after Clarkson became involved in a late-night ‘fracas’ with show producer Oisin Tymon.

The BBC officially dropped Clarkson from Top Gear, despite more than 500,000 people signing a petition to have him reinstated.

He, along with wingmen Richard Hammond and James May, left to produce their well-received big-budget series, The Grand Tour for Amazon.

Steve thinks that, despite Oisin Tymon's bloody lip, it was all for the best: “I think Clarkson, Hammond and May quit at exactly the right time.

"It was just on the cusp of them starting to, some of the ideas were coming around for the second or third time. There was still an engaging watch, but I thought, when they quit, I thought ‘Oh, that's good timing'.”

Steve added that, despite not getting on with Clarkson, he has had one convivial drink with his one-time co-host.

He explained: “In real life, Jeremy is a less bombastic version of that person that you see on the screen,” he said. “You couldn't act that persona for all the years that he has.

“He is kind of like that, and like I said, even though he and I never really got on together, the last time I met him in person, there was a bar, it was at a car show and there was an open bar and he said, 'Barry, people know we don't like each other, I'll buy you a pint and we'll stand over there pretending we like each other'.”

These days, Steve is spending much of his time on launching a new, affordable supercar: “I thought, why have sports cars become so incredibly complex and so insanely powerful?

"What if we went back to the principles of the Lotus Elite, a car that was super lightweight. And which had skinny tyres and had about 75 brake horsepower."

He added: “We’ve got enough hyper cars. Oh, why do they have to be so expensive? Let's build something that's lightweight, simple, and fun, and retails for a fraction of the cost of this other stuff.

"You don't need to go crazy fast to have fun. If a car is simple and it's very direct and you feel connected to the road, 50 miles an hour can feel like 150 miles an hour.”