[on Richard's return]
Anyway, listen. This is the big question. I guess everybody wants to know. Are you ready? Are you now a mental?
RichardNo!
[the audience laughs]
Richard
I'm not! I'm fixed! I'm completely fixed, and normal, and healed. Thank you. What are you doing?
I thought you might need these... [hands Hammond tissues] ...in case you start dribbling.
Richard
That's all I've had for four months...
Richard
No! People hanging around just watching, waiting for my eyes to point in different directions and for me to go bonkers. I'm fixed, I'm normal.
Are you the same person that you were before?
Richard
Yes! I mean, the doctors were worried, because it's brain damage, you know... personality change or whatever, but... no, the only difference between me now and me before the crash is... I like celery now and I didn't... before.
So you're still shouty? You're still fighty?
Richard
Yes...
And if I take you to the pub, are you still going to want to punch me in the face after 15 minutes?
Richard
Yes, though that's, to be honest, more [gestures to Jeremy] your personality than mine.
I always want to punch him in the face after 15 minutes, sometimes less.
Richard
Yeah, that's perfectly normal.
Richard
We weren't trying to set records, I just wanted to go really, really fast.
Richard
Yeah.
And you wanted to know what it was like to go really fast?
Richard
Yeah.
So you'd found out. Why didn't you just get into your car and go home?
[Richard looks sheepish]
Richard
I don't know really. The thing is, that run that you just saw, that was at 5 o'clock, and we had the runway until 5:30, and... [general laughter]
[during the roadworks, Jeremy is playing Margaret Thatcher's speeches on the loudspeaker]
(voiceover) At 4 am, there were still 700 yards to go, and the men were flagging. So, I brought out the motivational big gun.
MTMargaret Thatcher
(over loudspeakers) ...another winter of discontent.
Richard
This is... Thatcher? To motivate the men?
TThatcher
(over loudspeakers) ...and I hope it will be followed by a winter of common sense.
Yes! I like that one! (applauds)
Richard
Don't, you'll encourage him!
(voiceover) The chaps, however, were not Telegraph readers like James. So I promised them that the sooner they finished laying, the sooner I'd switch her off.
[To the car dealer] How much murdering goes on here?
CDCar Dealer
A lot. If you go one mile away from here- if you go to any street-
CDCar Dealer
Yeah. Everybody up here, they got guns. Including me. Wanna see? [Pulls out a gun]
CDCar Dealer
It's real- here- [takes out the magazine, hands the gun to Jeremy]
[takes the gun] Now, you see, I wasn't ready for that.
CDCar Dealer
Welcome to United States.
[cut to Jeremy walking out of a door, carrying a rifle]
[to camera] This is his other gun. [To the dealer] That's not a shotgun Robert, that's a rifle.
CDCar Dealer (Robert, I guess.)
Yeah, that's a rifle. The Shotgun is... somewhere else. I don't know.
You need this if you're going to be a car salesman?
RRobert
The guy right here, If you go two blocks down here, he got shot 5 times.
Why, by someone buying a car?
RRobert
He killed the guy.
RRobert
He killed the guy.
So why have you got telescopic sights on here?
RRobert
Because if they go far away you just shoot them. You saw the movie, John Wayne? The guy is runnning all the way, like 500 feet, and phyw! You shoot him right there.
[cut to Richard answering his phone]
Richard
Yes, Jeremy, How're you doing?
Just been told by my new best friend- Robert, the Persian- if you go beyond 79th street you will definitely be murdered.
Richard
[looks panicked] What?
[cut to Jeremy] Jeremy: Hammond is wearing cowboy boots. They're gonna shoot him, aren't they?
[cut to Richard, confused]: Is it south or north of 79th street? I can't go.
[cut to Richard walking along a street] (voiceover) Richard: I decided the best plan was to stay on 79th street itself.
[regarding James' Cadillac]
Richard
You don't say, it's not fast! Is it not mate? I took one look and thought, "ooo, it looks like a Lotus Exige!"
[Over the CB radios] Brokeback, Brokeback. This is Murderer.
Richard
This is Brokeback to Murderer and the Captain.
[Shot of Jeremy, looking confused as the sound that spews out of the CB radio is entirely indecipherable] I wonder why these CB radios never caught on...
Breaker breaker One-Nine Contact Eyeball Ten Ten 'till we do it again Captain Slow.
Richard
He's there! [Points out the window to James' car] He's there and I can't understand him!
[after wiping of the "offending" artwork]
JJeremy (narrating)
With the artwork gone, we hit the road...hard.
I'm doing something I'd never thought I would do. I am running for the border.
God in heaven, that was actually frightening.
Richard
They could've killed us!
They really do have an irony deficiency here. I can honestly believe that in certain parts of America now, people have started to mate with vegetables.
How can you get... there's no wild tortoises here.
Richard
Well, they gotta be somewhere.
It's escaped from some 8-year-old girl's bedroom.
Richard
How can a tortoise escape? [pretends to chase a tortoise in slow motion] Come back! Come back!
[Jeremy laughs]
[Talking about Porsches vs Ferrarris]
... It's like David Attenborough. I respect David Attenborough, I mean just, infinite respect, in the same way I respect that car. But I have no passion for him; I don't want to make love to him.
Richard
Yeah but... [audience laughing] But I have respect and passion for the 911.
There you are, you just admitted on television that you wanna make love to David Attenborough.
[News about Porsche 911, continued from the earlier discussion...]
Richard
It's possibly the ultimate 911.
In the same way that Ebola is the ultimate tropical disease, [Pointing to the 911 roll cage] what's all that scaffolding in the back?
Richard
Well, it's a roll cage.
No, I'm sorry. If I see scaffolding around a building, I'll go Oh look, they haven't finished that yet. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say that's not finished.
[Still on the Porsche 911, after Hammond explained the intricacies of using it in daily life]
So in the real world my 1.2 litre Fiat Panda is faster to the shops.
Richard
No mate, it's just not.
Because I've got to put the seatbelt on once. You have got to do it six times.
Richard
OK, I've got to do that and wait whilst you put your seatbelts on and then go through all your preflight checks, and make sure all the airvents are all in the same direction. [audience laughing]
Top Gear · 1,774 quotes
