James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963) is a British television presenter and award-winning journalist.

May is best known as co-presenter of the motoring programme Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond. He also writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph’s motoring section. On Top Gear, his nickname is “Captain Slow”, owing to his ‘careful’ driving style. He has, however, carried out some exceptionally high-speed driving (including taking a Bugatti Veyron to its top speed during an episode of Top Gear.)

Early and personal life

James May was born in Bristol, one of four children; he had two sisters and a brother. In early years James attended Caerleon Endowed Junior School in Newport, Monmouthshire. He spent his teenage years in South Yorkshire where he attended Oakwood Comprehensive School in Rotherham and was a choirboy at Whiston Parish Church. Rotherham is the town where Jeremy Clarkson began his journalistic career. He was also at school with Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes star Dean Andrews. A keen flautist and pianist, he later studied music at Lancaster University, where he was a member of Pendle College. May currently lives in Hammersmith, London with his cat Fusker, who was a gift from Richard Hammond’s wife, Mindy and has been dating the music journalist and dance critic Sarah Frater since 2000.

May has owned several cars, including a Bentley T2, a 1971 Rolls-Royce Corniche, a Jaguar XJS, a Range Rover, a Fiat Panda, a Datsun 120Y, a Porsche 911, a Porsche Boxster S (which he claims is the first car he has ever purchased new) a Mini Cooper and several motorbikes. He has a penchant for prestige cars like Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, as well as simple and basic cars such as the Fiat Panda and uses a Brompton folding bicycle for commuting.

He obtained a light aircraft pilot’s licence in October 2006 having trained at White Waltham Airfield. Although he had not qualified for night flying at the time, he was still able to fly a Cessna 182 in a Top Gear challenge with Richard Hammond as a passenger. He owns a Luscombe 8A ‘Silvaire’ and an American Champion 8KCAB Super Decathlon with the registration number G-OCOK, a play on his trademark phrase used on Top Gear. In July 2008, May announced on a radio show that he was selling the Luscombe. He passed his driving test on his second attempt, and justified this by saying “All the best people pass the second time”.

Radio and television career

His past television credits include presenting Driven on Channel 4 in 1998-1999, narrating an eight part BBC One series called Road Rage School, and co-hosting the ITV1 coverage of the 2006 London Boat Show.

He also wrote and presented a Christmas special called James May’s Top Toys (for BBC One) exploring the toys of his childhood. This list was followed up the next year by a sequel of sorts, broadcast on BBC Two, entitled James May: My Sister’s Top Toys, this time attempting to investigate the gender divide of toy appeal.

He first co-presented Top Gear in 1999, before it was axed by the BBC owing to poor viewing figures. He rejoined the show in the second series of the present Top Gear format, where he earned the nickname “Captain Slow” owing to his “careful” driving style. Despite this nickname, he has done some especially high-speed driving, including on Top Gear Series 9 taking a Bugatti Veyron to its top speed of 253mph (407km/h) which is nearly one-third of the speed of sound at sea level. He also flew a Eurofighter Typhoon at a speed of around 1320 mph for his television programme, James May’s 20th Century. He also became one of the first people – with co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson and an Icelandic support crew – to travel to the magnetic North Pole in a car (a modified Toyota Hilux) and also one of the first people to drive across the Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana. In late 2006, the BBC broadcast Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure, a series in which May, a committed bitter drinker, travelled around France with wine expert Oz Clarke. A second series was transmitted in late 2007, this time with May and Clarke in the Californian wine country, and was followed by a third series in 2009 called Oz and James Drink to Britain.

He has also presented a documentary for Sky about sharks called Inside Killer Sharks and a series looking at inventions and discoveries during the twentieth century, entitled James May’s 20th Century.

In late 2008, the BBC broadcast James May’s Big Ideas, a three-part series in which May travelled around the globe in search of implementations for concepts widely considered science fiction.