“I had a mixed upbringing in that my dad was very working class and my grandfather was very middle class and so my dad had motorbikes, which is where my motorcycle obsession comes from”.
I’m sitting with Steve Berry in a London Hotel in Kensington chatting over drinks having met up earlier at the V & A Museum who were hosting a special exhibition on cars. An exhibition that Steve felt very much at home as he’d point out cars and wax lyrically about them.
However it was the two wheeled variant that was the focus of his youth. As a teenager he started off riding motorbikes but after watching the film Quadrophenia and watching The Jam play live, quickly swapped to scooters and the Mod lifestyle. “Compared to a motorbike, it was rotten” he said describing his scooter experience. “….. it was unstable, it wobbled all over the place. It wasn’t very fast.”
He ended up as Editor of Scooter Magazine, which at that time was the sole Classic Scooter monthly magazine in the world and through which he subsequently met the man who changed his life, Jeremy Howlett. “Jeremy built custom scooters on a scale that nobody had done before. I mean, mind blowing customs with tens of thousands of pounds invested in them, but he also liked motorbikes”. It was while visiting Jeremy to photograph a scooter that Steve was given the opportunity to ride a new motorbike that Jeremy was getting delivered that very day. An FZR 1000 Yamaha.
“I’m like 19, 20 (years old) so I got on this big Yamaha thousand and let off down the road and I realized that it was faster in first than my scooter which was a super tuned 230cc Lambretta with a massive Weber carburettor on it and an expansion chamber and electronic ignition. So I upped it from 12bhp to like 30, but this Yamaha was faster in first gear then my libretto was flat out and I thought that’s it, can’t go back and I didn’t. That was it, motorbikes. I just went to motorbikes.”
His decision was later reinforced when his Editor at the magazine asked him to write an article about a Harley Davidson for one of their sister magazines. “So I went to Harley Davidson in Daventry on the Monday on the train and picked up a Harley Davidson Fatboy and I was riding back to Manchester, it was when Terminator 2 was out, and I thought this is something else man! And that was it. Off I went. Motorbikes. I’ve still got a soft spot for scooters and I’ve always owned one. I’ve still got a Vespa but what I don’t try and do is make them go too fast because you soon realize there is the restriction that a 10” wheel puts on any vehicle.”
It was an encounter with another motorcycle owner that again changed his life. The biker in question being the producer of a TV show called Top Gear who offered Steve the chance to try out for the show. A few weeks later and Steve found himself filming a review for a new BMW. “They were very sly in those days……. they get you on and they give you three or four tries and then if you were rubbish they quietly get rid of you. The number of people that had three or four go’s doing a Top Gear. Loads of journalists ended up doing that. Really good people. Great writers, but just rubbish on telly.”
“There was some great characters back then, like Russell Bulgin, Leonard Setright and George Bishop. Journalists who genuinely did not give a shit because back then you could afford not to give a shit because you could earn a decent salary and you could be absolutely honest. You could say exactly what you thought without worrying about advertising money and stuff like that.”
Tell me about your time at Top Gear and working with Jeremy Clarkson.
Well Jeremy’s like a brand isn’t he. He’s like Nike or Coca Cola and people say, is he like that in real life and I’m, not really no. What you see is an exaggerated version of what Jeremy is really like. We never really got on, if I’m honest. But Last time I saw him we had a pint. He said, come on let’s have a pint and freak people out because people know we don’t like each other
Why didn’t you and Jeremy get on?
Because Jeremy is super competitive……he was all right with me at first, but then when I started getting more airtime and then when they shifted me from just bikes to cars and bikes he didn’t like that. He was what John and Dennis (the producers of Top Gear at the time) got right, which is that they employed working journalists instead of presenters. So we took all the ideas to them. I said I want to test ride this new Kawasaki and they were, there isn’t a new Kawasaki. I said, yeah there is, it’s only available in Japan but I know the first one that’s going to be in Europe so we need to go to Switzerland to ride it. That’s how they worked.
Another presenter you worked with was Andy Wilman..
He was briefly. He did an article about a nudist car show, I seem to remember, in which the power bulges and fenders and rear spoilers had to be carefully positioned for a half past eight on a Thursday evening on BBC Two.
.......and he became a producer of Top Gear.
He’s like the fifth Beatle. He’s like the guiding hand behind Top Gear and the Grand Tour.
Why did you leave Top Gear?
Got sacked. We all got sacked. End of ‘99. We all got sacked and I remember we never got told. I was in Bavaria on a motorway and my phone kept ringing and they were trying to get me to go to Donnington on the Saturday to do some sort of track testing. And it was like, right, yeah. Okay, I’ll be there. Stop calling me we’re trying to finish this feature.
So, I got back on the Friday and I was calling the office, no answer. But I’ve been there for nearly 10 years. I wasn’t, you know Wasn’t that concerned. But then I got a call from one of the other presenters and he went, can you get through to the office and I went, nobody’s answering the phone. And he went, yeah, nobody’s answering the phone to me either.
Were the ratings bad?
No, it was because they thought that we were all terrible, horrible, sexist, men. We were all horrible, straight white men. But it got to the point where the three bosses above us were all women. And they just went, right we need to stop this. So they brought it back with Kate Humble and Julia Bradbury and the main presenters.
Because it originally started with Angela Rippon
Well, it started as a regional show just in Birmingham. I actually did 21 years of Top Gear, I actually did a program for what is now Dave, or what it was called before. With Noel Edmunds he’s a great guy, by the way. He was one of the original Top Gear presenters, a real car guy. Like when they did that rally show, and they said, oh, we’re gonna get these celebrities and then Noel was in it and I went, Noel will win that easy. And of course he did.
I’ll tell you something about the way television works. I got hired to do a bike show for ITV at the last minute, I mean, the real last minute. And later on, I asked the producer and I said, how come it was so last minute. He went, the guy that they hired for the show to present it was in a TV commercial, where he played a biker, but when he turned up on the set to present the TV show that he hired him for, he told them, he couldn’t ride a motorbike.
They hired him because he played a biker in a TV commercial and he looked like a biker, but in real life, he couldn’t ride a motorbike. So guess what? They had to go, shit, let’s call Steve Berry. Steve can you come and ride the bikes? They didn’t tell me the other guy can’t ride a motorbike. I turned up and there he was looking like a biker.
What do you think of the New Top Gear? It seems like it’s no longer the preserve of journalists and more about celebrity presenters. Apart from Chris Harris who is a journalist.
Is he? Has he ever made a living exclusively by writing?
He worked for Evo (magazine) for a while, he did that thing Drive and then Chris Harris On Cars. Somebody said to me, Oh, he can really drive and I think well, do you know what, I’ve got mates that could lap him within four blocks, but they have no personality. He’s a good driver for a journalist but he’s not a racer. If he was a Racer he would be racing.
I always felt that as a journalist, what you’re doing is you’re giving the ordinary person an idea of what it’s like. The problem with employing racing drivers to test cars is, they are all slow to them. I remember I interviewed Damon Hill and he turned up in a Renault Safrane Estate and I said to him, I thought you’d have something a bit quicker. He said, Steve, compared to the day job, everything that’s road legal feels like a school bus with flat tyres. And if you ever get in or near an F1 car you think, yeah, everything else is shit compared to this.
Do you watch the new Top Gear series?
I haven’t watched it, why would I watch it. I’m into cars. I watch the Motor Trend Channel, Jay Leno and old documentaries made in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s by people like the BBC. I’ve got no interest in watching a stand up comedian tell me how much lateral G he thinks a car has.
The thing is, Jeremy, Richard and James are all as obsessed as we are. I have conversations with each one of them about really geeky shit. I remember having a conversation with James My about the glove box in the Ford Capri. How well designed it was.
What about the other UK car shows?
Rubbish
What’s wrong with them?
I don’t see anything I like.
The only person I like or the only person that’s got any integrity is Mike Brewer and the way this thing is, people will slag Mike from here to eternity and they have no idea of what Mike actually knows. He’s a very knowledgeable guy. He’s probably as good a mechanic as Ed China, but he played a bloody part on that show.
The people don’t realise Mike was playing a role. Ed and Mike were playing two roles on Wheeler Dealers. One was the Wheeler Dealer ‘Hello mate, I’m a Cockney Wheeler Dealer. That was Mike and Ed was like ‘oh, I’m more of the James May. Ed was playing James May. It’s a James May impression, isn’t it? The hair the attitude, the demeanour. It’s a James May impression. They were both happy to do those jobs and people go, oh, no, I don’t like that Mike Brewer guy. I like Ed because he can change brake pads.
I mean, what’s the hardest thing Ed ever actually did. You look at a guy like Allen Millyard, the guy that builds the one off bikes. Allen will build a motorcycle from scratch, make his own crank cases, make his own crankshaft, make his own connecting rods, make his own pistons. Now that is an engineer. Changing brake pads, I can do that. You can do that. Mike Brewer can do that. I’ve got nothing against Ed, but Ed was playing a part, Mike was playing the part. But I’m not going to sit for an hour and watch somebody changing brake pads and then go, oh, look, we’ve restored this Porsche or whatever it is. You’re giving it a gentle wash and brush up.
There does seem to be a plethora of restoration shows.
Do you know why? Because it’s got a beginning, a middle and an end. Peopleneed a narrative arc they need for it to start with a challenge. Then they see you struggle. Then they see you overcome difficulty and succeed. That’s an hour of talent.
Fine, but we don’t need 10 of them! You can’t have 10 different series doing the same thing. Where are the documentaries about a particular marque or a particular car?
The only thing people are interested in is repeating formats. They want something that can be done not just once or twice, but can be done for 10 years, Top gear, Bake Off, Strictly. It just goes again and again and again. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end, and you’ve got an hour of telly. Sorted.
Tell me about some of the cars you have owned.
I bought a Karman Ghia earlier this year, and I thought yeah I’m going to take this Karman Ghia to VW things with my son and then I drove it and I thought, oh, my God, this thing’s terrible. I put a picture on social media and people said, oh, my God, it’s such a beautiful that car. And somebody said, I have to have it and messaged me. So I drove that car onto the low loader out of the garage where it had been and that’s the only time I have ever drove it. I got a message that offered me what I had paid for it and half again on top. So I literally called the low loader guy and said keep going, go to Liverpool. I’ll text you the postcode. 
How much are they worth now?
Well, I’ve seen one that was subject to a £70,000 restoration. So what’s it worth? Well to somebody it was worth £70,000 pounds plus the purchase price. About two months after I saw it and after I owned it for less than a day, I went see that movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Brad Pitt drives a Karmann Ghia convertible in it, just like the one that I bought and sold.
We were in the cinema and my missus was saying is that the car that you bought and sold on the same day? And I said yes. She said it’s really beautiful. Why did you sell it? I said, Well, I’ll tell you what it didn’t do. It didn’t drive like that one. Because in the movie, it’s scything through traffic. If you actually drive the Karmann Ghia convertible, the nought to 60 times is in excess of 20 seconds. It doesn’t really accelerate, it gains momentum. So it looks fabulous for a drive. And people say to me, yeah, but you could put a Porsche engine in it. And I say, I’ve been down that road of putting large powerful engines in cars that are dog slow. And all it did was make them dangerous. It made them faster, but it also made them horribly dangerous.
I just drove an 812 Super Fast and the one thing that really impressed me with that car was how everything in that car worked with everything else. It’s a beautifully balanced car. When you think it’s got a 800 horsepower, the way that the suspension and the brakes and the tyres and the steering and the gearbox work together, the only people that can do that are Ferrari because they’re the only people that built that car front engined V12, rear wheel drive naturally aspirated two seater car, a Ferrari. And they’ve been doing it since the late 50s and they’ve learnt everything that you need to know. And all the others Bentley, Aston Martin, Porsche …. they’re following behind, because of that heritage.
I had a 5.0 litre turbo Trans Am. Pearl white with the screaming eagle or the squawking budgie as we call them on the bonnet and a turned aluminum dashboard and the medium and a wine red draylon interior and get this from five litres and a turbo, 150 horsepower. It’s like you wonder how they managed to get such little power. It’s a five litre V8 and it’s got a turbo. What’s it generate? 150 horsepower. I’ve got a two litre Alfa 1971 Twin Cam on twin Weber’s 140 horsepower and nearly 10 years later they were getting 150 horse power from a V8, a five litre V8 with a turbo!! The turbo was so primitive and leaf springs at the back that when it kicked in, if it was wet, the thing would just change direction and it would just start going backwards. I mentioned it to a friend and he said just don’t drive it in the wet and I said, mate, I live in Manchester, how can I not drive it in the wet, it’s wet all the time.
What are you up to these days?
I make a radio show called Steve’s Speed Shop. It’s about enthusiasts. It’s about cars and motorbikes. And it’s mainly people who have stories to tell. So they’ve had a life. It’s generally older guys, because they’ve got more stories. And we fill an hour with it and it just reflects my interest, which is anything one off, anything exceptional and it tends to be people who have collections, people who have built one off cars, people who have a deep knowledge of not just a passing interest, but a deep knowledge of car culture. And that doesn’t mean super cars or cars of super high end value. Although there are a lot of those people.
My guest next week is a guy who spent almost his whole life devoted to the original mini and he just has so many stories. He restored the Paul McCartney mini, the Ringo Starr mini for a very prominent person in the world of motor racing and then he said you do realise that the next time one of the Beatles minis comes up for sale, people are going to know.
Where can we listen to it?
It’s a podcast. It’s called Steve’s Speed Shop. You can get it on Spotify or iTunes or Google Play or any of the any of the platforms that you get your podcasts from
I’ve got a few questions from some of our members. First, from Richard Davis, “does Steve think that Jeremy Vine (Radio & TV Presenter) is a Prat because of their arguments on Radio 2 about cyclists?
Jeremy is a genius. He has got the biggest share in British radio. He’s got seven and a half million people listen to that show. And I’m on there pretty regularly and I love doing that show. And I’ve met him and he’s just super switched on guy. He knows exactly what he’s doing. And if you think about it, he’s doing that show on Channel Five is going on his folding bicycle, is cycling like a maniac across London. He’s doing two hours on Radio Two every day. He’s a genius in his own way.
Jeremy Moore says “I was a big fan of Tope Gear back in the 90’s when it was a proper car show. Ask Steve if the original format could ever be recreated?
No and here’s the problem. I went to work as an advisor on an ITV answer to Top Gear that was conceived by some real successful high ups at ITV and I said to the execs ‘I’ve looked at the biggest spends in commercial TV advertising. So first, it’s breakfast cereal. Second is cars. I’ve looked at the top 10 spends and Ford, Renault and Nissan are in the top three. You’ve got a problem. If you take the new Ford, they said, No, it’s okay. We’re going to concentrate on supercars. I said, You’ve got a problem. Well, all the supercar factories are owned by the companies you just talked about. Lamborghini is VW, Ferrari is FIAT Chrysler, Aston Martin at the time was Ford. I said they’re going to be as pissed off. If you say, Oh, this one’s clearly better than the others. It can’t work on commercial TV.
Yusef Mamoojee asks your thoughts on whether bikes and superbikes will become electric powered like cars?
I’ve been writing and thinking and broadcasting about this quite a lot recently and talking to the guys that are building electric motorcycles, or electric two wheelers. One of the biggest issues is the torque sent through a gearbox. Because one of the ways that motorcyclists control the machine is to use the gearbox, even more so than in a performance car. I’m constantly thinking or looking which gear I’m in on a motorcycle because I’m using it to control the amount of torque that’s going to the back wheel.
So you think there’s never going to be electric motorcycles?
No, there’s ways of doing it. There’s ways of using regen or regen as engine braking. You are sending power back to the battery or whatever the energy storage source is and that replicates engine braking, but that’s just for old giffers like me. There’s probably a new generation coming who to them it’s not a problem. They’ll only know electric two wheelers so they’ll get on and go ‘what’s your problem Grandad. What’s engine braking!
If you could buy any car today, money no object, what would it be?
There are two cars that I’m actively looking for at the moment. One is a first year Porsche Boxter.
Why a first year Porsche Boxster?
Because that was the least messed about with Boxster
The 2.5?
Yep. The original Boxster. I remember driving it when it was brand new and thinking, what a fantastic car. The people who slagged it didn’t understand what that cars for. It’s a car that you buy and you drive and you’re absolutely thrashed the knackers.
And the other one is a FIAT Coupe 20V Turbo. I remember I was doing a track test back in the day and it was less than three seconds off a touring car around Donnington a lap and there was a car you could drive to the shops and I mean, I just love that Chris Bangle design.
I mean if money no objects the car that I was most impressed me…. was the Mercedes McLaren SLR. What a car! And that car really surprised me. I was expecting something refined, sophisticated and what I what I found was a F****** hot rod. Just a raw hot rod that was like fantastically exciting to drive.
You mentioned Chris Bangle, quick word about Chris Bangle. He was quite derided over the flame design. Looking back now what do you think?
I think people will look back at his time at BMW more kindly than they do now, but I do think that when it comes to car design, we have to go back to look for cars that are the vision of one man. You look at a McLaren F1, Gordon Murray.
Which other cars do you recall fondly or not so fondly?
The most underwhelming car I’ve driven was the Ferrari Dino GTS. I don’t care how much money they were, they’re disappointing to drive. And the most impressive car that I’ve driven, thinking it might not be that great was the Diablo SE. Oh, man alive! What a car!
It had so much drama, so much theatre. It was like meeting a rock star. I’ve met Jimmy Page, Pete Jones, Brian May, Billy Gibbons I’ve met all those rock stars because that was my day job for nearly 10 years. Driving a Diablo was like meeting one of the Gods of Rock. Much more than Murcielago, a Gallardo or a Huracan or whatever came after.
Last question from Mark Wilson who asks, what’s Quentin Willson really like?
Great guy. Quentin’s funny. Quentin’s a lot of laughs. It’s that sort of semi serious Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons. Count Duckula… (laughs)
It’s funny, about a year ago, I was at an event at the NEC and Quentin and Tiff were on stage and my mate said go up behind them. So I came up from the back of the stage unannounced and went ‘hi everybody, it’s 1994 again’ and the pair of them were killing themselves laughing.
Here’s the thing about Quentin, he knows what he’s talking about. Listen to him. Think about what his predictions have been over the last sort of 20, 25 years as to what’s going to gain money, what’s going to lose money. He’s on the money, isn’t he. If you look at Quentin’s predictions, where he said you need to buy one of these, these are gonna go up. These are gonna go down. He knows what he’s talking about. But he’s a lot more fun than he comes across.
The person who I met who was the least like their TV persona was Ainsley Harriett. Because Ainsley is a real petrolhead. You should interview him. He knows his cars and he’s had everything.
Ainsley Harriet? The TV Chef?
Yes, mate. So I’m with him at this event and he’s asking me all these questions and he really knows his stuff, he’s done his own work and he’s a Porsche man but he was talking about switching maybe for an Aston or a Ferrari. So he’d be quizzing me about stuff and then a Punter would come up and he switched to Ainsley Mode. (Steve attempts an impression of Ainsley at this point) “Hello, dear. Would you like a picture? Let’s get in a lovely picture. All right love” and then afterwards “so Steve, when you’re on the gas…..” He can switch to the telly guy straight away. And then he comes back to me as what he’s really like, which is quite a serious guy.
I’ll tell you the other person who I’ve met who was like that and knew what she was talking about, Rosemary Conley. The woman who used to do the hip & thigh diet. She sold millions of books. I’m on Richard and Judy, can’t remember why, and she’s there and she said, ‘oh yeah, your Top Gear. I’ve just bought a Bentley’ and she starts rattling off all these facts about this Bentley and she said, ‘but I don’t if it’s a good idea. I was going to get an M5.’ She’s really into talking about cars and she absolutely knows what she’s talking about. And I thought, wow, this woman’s really up to speed. If you saw her on the TV, you’d never think that she’s a real car person.
Steve, thank you for your time.
You can listen to Steve’s Podcast Series “Steve’s Speedshop” on FAB Radio International.