Chris Evans Calls Top Gear Newspaper Rumours 'Mad And Made Up'

Since Chris Evans was announced as Top Gear’s new host, it feels like not a week has gone by without a newspaper reporting on some kind of issue behind the scenes. There were rumours of fall outs amid the reality of key figures like Tom Ford and Lisa Clarke leaving, the infamous vomit scene which is now looking like it was staged, and claims of a disgruntled studio audience only a few days ago. Speaking in a BBC interview today though, Evans dismissed many of the rumours.

He refused to mention any particular stories as: “You learn not to defend yourself. Because if you do, that will always be misconstrued,” but went on to say: “You can let this story run for long enough that the things they’re saying will be seen and discovered to be absolute nonsense.”

Alluding to early claims of arguments and fall outs, Evans said: “The things they started with were so mad and so made up, I thought ‘where’s this going to go’…What I found amazing was all the people they mentioned within the article were going to be in the office in five minute’s time, and we all knew it was made up because the meeting where we are supposed to have done this and that we didn’t even have…It was insane.”

The 50-year-old did admit that for his past “pretty stupid, pretty naughty,” antics he “deserved” a hounding from the press, but that this time “I actually did just get up and go to work.” Giving us a hint of what to expect from the show meanwhile, Evans said: “If you’re changing the presenter line up completely, that’s pretty much change enough…It wasn’t broken, so why would we change it that much?”

We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out exactly how this revamped version of Top Gear has worked out - and believe me, we’re as intrigued as everyone else to find out. In the meantime, make sure you check out our interview with new TG presenter Rory Reid.