Jeremy Clarkson ‘marooned’ in Botswana with Richard Hammond and James May after flight cancelled

The Grand Tour presenting trio, comprising Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, are “marooned” at a luxury camp in Botswana, Clarkson has revealed.

The three former Top Gear hosts were filming in Africa for the forthcoming Grand Tour specials, which will air on Amazon Prime Video, when their flights home were apparently cancelled.

On Tuesday (3 October), Clarkson, 63, shared a photo of his co-presenters sitting on their phones at a dining table alongside the caption: “BA [British Airways] have messed up our flight home so we are marooned here at a luxury camp in Botswana. With only 40 staff. It’s all about survival now.”

Clarkson and May, 60, have since posted a number of sarcastic updates about their “desperate” situation.

“Staff/guest ratio ‘as low as 40:1’ in hell-hole safari lodge where GT presenters have been abandoned by their crew. Cheese has arrived,” May shared on Twitter/X alongside a photo of a luxurious cheese board.

“When BA delay a flight by 12 hours, do they not realise how much hardship they inflict on passengers? We are fighting to stay alive here,” Clarkson wrote alongside a photo of an outdoor swimming pool.

“Thanks to the incompetence of British Airways we’ve had to endure a sunset safari with gin and tonics and meerkats. #Unacceptable,” May added alongside a video of meerkats playing.

In another post, Clarkson shared a video of the lodge’s opulent, open-air lounge, showing May opening a fridge fully stocked with cold beverages, including the Clarkson-owned lager, Hawkstone, which he looks at dubiously. “We are coping. But for how long?” He captioned the post.

A release date and details about the next instalments of The Grand Tour have been kept under wraps; however, in a previous tweet, Clarkson thanked Zimbabwe for their trip there.

“My profound thanks to the people and government of Zimbabwe for helping to make a very special Grand Tour special, very special. We absolutely adored everything about your country. Apart from the pot holes maybe,” he wrote.

In a recent interview, Clarkson said that he and his co-stars would be on “slightly scary ground” in the next specials.

“We’re doing things that we used to do when we were in our 30s and 40s,” he explained. “But now we’re in our 50s and 60s, so I’m slightly nervous about the next two.

“Let’s just say we’re going back to Africa, and this one’s a hard one. It’s hard if you’re young and fit, but I’m really not fit. I’m very fat. And I’m 63 now.”

The Prime Video show is now in its fifth series since debuting in 2016. The show was born after Clarkson was dismissed from Top Gear in 2015 after attacking a producer.

May, Hammond, 53, and producer Andy Wilman decided to exit the show with him. The Grand Tour follows a similar format to the Top Gear specials, focused on the presenters travelling to foreign places in a specific type of vehicle to complete various challenges.