The Grand Tour presenter and social media star Francis Bourgeois is the latest guest on the brand-new series of award-winning podcast Fuelling Around.
The 26-year-old is best known for his social media following, in which he creates videos about his love of trains and trainspotting.
He sat down with hosts Vicki Butler-Henderson and Dave Vitty to chat about his career, his love for four-wheels and the new series of Amazon’s The Grand Tour.
Francis Bourgeois on filming in the Mojave Desert
During the wide-ranging chat, Butler-Henderson was keen to know whether there was a particular moment from Bourgeois’ first six episodes of The Grand Tour that stood out to him.
“When I was driving the Hennessey Venom,” Bourgeois began to explain.
“Thomas (Holland) in the (Chevrolet) ZR1 and James (Engelsman) in the Mustang GTD, we were driving through the Mojave Desert. There’s just this dead-straight road for tens of miles, and it was just undulating, up and down.
“But we had a bit of downtime in terms of delivering stuff to camera. And I connected my phone to the Bluetooth, and still I love when connecting Bluetooth feature to cars, you kind of keep the car’s Bluetooth identity in your Bluetooth history.
“I connected my phone and Roxy Music came on, Virginia Plain. So it was like one of the best songs probably to listen to in that instance. And even though my air conditioning had stopped working, I put the windows down and listened to the music and just felt the power and rolling through the landscape.
“I was getting so sweaty that the sweat was mixing with the sun cream on my face and kind of going into my eyes. So then I kind of started weeping. And then Phil (Churchward, director) actually said, ‘Oh, can you guys, if you want to talk about any kind of road trips or journeys or experiences that resonate with what you’re doing at the moment, please go ahead.’
“I was like, okay, there’s nothing that can really compare, but actually thinking about the contrast between where I was as a car spotter as a child and seeing something like the Hennessey Venom on the road. I used to have a notepad and pen, and I’d write down cool cars that I’d seen, just in these little notebooks. And if I were to see the Hennessey Venom, or anything equivalent at the time, it would just be like, okay, my car spotting’s complete.
“I was almost relaying that and feeling all this kind of sensation of just awe and, I suppose, the whole peculiarity of things, and the tears induced by the sun cream then just started coming out of my tear ducts as provoked by my emotion. I have no idea why that didn’t make the cut.”
Plenty more episodes of Fuelling Around to enjoy
Series 12 is off and running, but if you’ve only just found our podcast, you can listen to all of our old episodes.
The show has been graced by a string of celebrity guests that you can listen to for the first time – or as many times as you want thereafter.
You can also tune into Fuelling Around on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or various other platforms if you want to see what all the fuss is about.
