Grand Tour stars committed ‘international crime’ without realising in final episode

Exclusive: Clarkson, Hammond, and May say their last adventure may have led to some illicit activity

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he, Richard Hammond and James May inadvertently committed an international crime in the final episode of the Grand Tour.

The trio celebrated the end of their 22-year partnership at an event in London on Tuesday (10 September). It comes after they dissolved their joint company W Chump and Sons, which produces the Prime Video series.

“I have to be a little bit careful because I believe the ambassador for Zimbabwe is here,” Clarkson began.

“One of the bits of the story that’s disappeared, which will make this not make sense, is that we discovered that in Zimbabwe you can buy silver for pennies, really surprisingly cheap.

“So we decided to buy a lot of it and use it to fashion accessories for our cars. Then when we got to the border with Botswana, we thought, ‘Oh, sh*t, we’ve got all this silver’.”

Hammond chipped in: “We weren’t supposed to have it”.

“So we had to get across into Botswana without anybody noticing that we’ve got quite a lot of silver about our person,” Clarkson continued.

“You smuggled silver, huge amounts of it into Botswana,” Mariella Frostrup, who hosted the event interjected as she called the trio “perhaps the world’s dumbest criminals.”

Clarkson, Hammond and May inadvertently smuggled silver into Botswana (Andrew Timms)

“We carried it off with style, and panache,” added Hammond.

”They thought that they got away with it,” Frostrup continued. “They were all breathing a sign of relief. But of course, now it’s going to be on television across the globe and very hard to miss the fact that you’ve committed that crime, just saying.”

Clarkson concluded, “Just in case when you see that you think, ‘Why are they that nervous about crossing into [Botswana]?’ That’s the bit that you didn’t see in the show.”

The TV star is currently enjoying the biggest success of his career with Clarkson’s Farm, a series also airing on Amazon’s subscription service that documents his attempts to run the 1,000-acre farm purchased in 2008.

Since premiering in 2021, Clarkson has extended his business empire by purchasing a Cotswolds pub for £1m – something he is developing a brand new series about, which will no doubt include the grim discovery he made outside the country boozer earlier this week.

The Grand Tour: One for The Road airs on Prime Video on Friday 13 September