Jeremy Clarkson passed lockdown drinking “ 500 cases of rose ” and won 2 stones

Jeremy Clarkson blames rosé wine after piling on more than the two stones he lost last year during the lockdown.

The presenter of the Grand Tour ordered “500 cases of roses” when the country shut down in March and spent the quarantine period “sitting down and drinking”.

It sounds like a pretty nice use of time.

A health boost in 2019 saw the auto fanatic get on his bike and throw two stones.

Due to his lockdown hobby, he admits, “It’s all back – and some more.”

As the second lockdown began, he said he would try to add a “strategy” to his “massive consumption” lockdown routine of the first quarantine sessions, but couldn’t promise to cut back.

Jeremy, 60, started cycling in 2018 during his “gap year in Indochina,” where he rode 3 km every day.

He said last year he gained his daily fix of wine by getting on his bike and lost an impressive amount of weight before touring Madagascar for the Grand Tour special, which aired in December.

This year, due to lockdown restrictions, he was unable to maintain the same level of cycling (alcohol consumption was not that difficult to maintain) although he remained active on his farm in the Cotswolds, Diddly Squat.

“There is a lot to do on the farm,” he said, chronicled on cameras.

“That’s what kept me busy for the past 12 months, filming the farm show.”

The Grand Tour Presents: A Massive Hunt launches Friday, December 18 on Amazon Prime Video.

‘Arrogant’ threesome when switching from Top Gear to BBC 1

Grand Tour host James May said he and longtime co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond were “arrogant” that Top Gear should ever leave his BBC 2 home – after the new host trio boasted of winning a ‘promotion’ by being fired at BBC 1.

James says the former presenters preferred not to be on Beeb’s main channel because they could get away with more.

“We think it’s a little more esoteric to be on BBC 2,” he says. “The BBC is a bit like being at school.

“There are adults to do adult things.

“They probably weren’t watching you as closely on BBC 2 as they were on BBC 1 – BBC 1 was family, and he had to be in good hands and he had to be harmless.

“Being on BBC 2 was kind of like sitting in the back in RE at school – you could quietly say ‘b ****** s’ and see if you could get away with it.

Admitting that the switch to the most family-friendly channel “may have popped up” during their tenure, he says, “We would always have been a little arrogant about this.”