There they are, hamstrung by our conventions but bereft of the eight-year inheritance during which we have carefully cultivated our mutual loathing of each other.

Ultimately, though, I believe they will vanquish us and stand on our mutilated corpses, holding Clarkson’s severed head aloft like Perseus triumphing over Medusa, and all because they have the right names.

We begin with professional racing driver Tanner Foust. Not only has he apparently emerged from the pages of Goethe, he actually sounds like he’s giving the car a thrashing.

I can just see myself, hampered with the name James May, trying to charm someone at a ball-aching media function when this snake-hipped b-----d shimmies up and says: “Hi, Tanner Foust, racing driver.”