Motorists can take a ride with Jeremy Clarkson when navigating from A to B now the Top Gear presenter has lent his voice to the latest Sat Nav.
True to his style, Clarkson will hector you with directions such as: ‘Turn right. Turn RIGHT. You missed it! For the love of . . !’
And instead of the usual instruction to ‘Do a U-turn where possible’, he will order drivers to perform a handbrake turn where safe to do so.
Coming through the latest navigation system from Tom Tom, Clarkson is set to make motorists’ journeys a whole lot more stressful.
He told The Sunday Times: “It is mostly about the tone of voice I use.
‘There’s a tone of voice I use when ordering people to do things, so, “I said left, left, I said left”, you know, that kind of thing.
“It’s not a gentle sat nav voice, put it like that.”
TomTom has come under fire for adopting Clarkson’s voice.
Julie Townsend, campaigns director for Brake, the road safety charity said: “Driving is a serious business and while there’s no problem with humorous voices used by sat navs, drivers need to be making sure that they are not getting distracted.”
The device, launched next month by Europe’s biggest sat nav maker, will also feature Stig, the mute racing driver from the show.
He added: “You can put it in Stig mode, apparently, which is when nothing happens. It doesn’t speak to you at all.
“So you can either have Stig or me and personally I would use the Stig most.”
It represents something of a change of heart for Clarkson, who has previously made fun of unreliable versions of the device.
In one tirade, he said: “I still haven’t found a sat nav that knows the M40 exists. All of them insist that London and Oxford are joined by the M4.
“And why in God’s name do the controls have to be so complicated? I don’t need sites of special interest. What I do need is a huge off button, six inches across and painted DayGlo yellow.”
In 2005, Clarkson’s review of the Mini sparked complaints when it suggested that a German version of the vehicle would have a sat nav system that “only goes to Poland”.
It is rumoured that Clarkson’s Top Gear co-presenters, Richard Hammond and James May have also been approached to make sat nave recordings – but Clarkson is dismissive of the idea.
He said: “Hammond, well that wouldn’t work because he hasn’t got the patience.
“James May genuinely doesn’t have a sense of direction. We were in a hotel in Brazil recently and I said good night to him in reception and came down in the morning and he was still wandering about with his suitcase because he couldn’t find his room.”
