#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
Now in the 80s and 90s I used to watch a LOT of Bollywood movies – not so much now, as frankly, they were better back then. Technically the newer movies are brilliant, but they can’t match the 70s/80s/90s for stories, script and acting, particularly when it came to Amitabh Bachchan.
Happy Star Trek Day, and happy 60th anniversary to what I still consider the world’s greatest science-fiction franchise. I love pretty much all of Star Trek, across all its different incarnations, and there have been so many brilliant moments over six decades that choosing favourites can become a fool’s errand. Yet every now and then Trek produces something that rises above being merely fun, thrilling or thought-provoking and hits you so hard that it seems to send a shockwave through your body and soul, imprinting itself permanently on your memory and firing a phaser set to stun directly into your heart.
Have you noticed that every celebrity is suddenly a novelist? It used to be mildly intriguing. A television presenter, newsreader, actor, actress or radio DJ would reveal that they had written a book and you might think, “Oh, they can write as well. That’s interesting.” Now every other Tom, Dick and Harry celebrity appears on a chat show clutching a freshly printed novel and announcing, with tremendous sincerity, that writing it has been “such a journey”.
So apparently there are now two Pakistani action heroes called Jamshed. One is Inspector Jamshed, a detective who first appeared in Ishtiaq Ahmed’s Urdu novels more than half a century ago and is now becoming the star of a major international action movie. The other is Jamshed Khan, a Pakistani ISI intelligence agent whom I created back in 1996 and who is now the hero of my thriller novel, Silent Ruin.
Amazon has replaced Clarkson, Hammond and May on The Grand Tour, and the BBC has just confirmed the revival of Top Gear. But has anyone stopped to ask if we really need these car shows?
Top Gear is coming back. The BBC has officially confirmed it, although there’s no word on when, what form it will take or who will present it. Meanwhile, Amazon is relaunching The Grand Tour next month with an entirely new trio: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman from the hugely successful Throttle House YouTube channel, joined by trainspotter and social media personality Francis Bourgeois. All six episodes arrive on Prime Video on 4 September 2026.
The next James Bond should not be Brown. He should not be Black. He cannot be Asian. And he certainly cannot be a woman. Can I actually say all of that now? Well, I’ve said it. I suppose I had better explain what I mean.
Tim Shaw and Fuzz Townshend are back with Car S.O.S. Series 14, bringing more outrageous restorations, emotional stories, and some properly bizarre behind-the-scenes moments – including a Nissan Pulsar GTI-R debate, a Rover P4 with a mental-health mission, and one unforgettable toilet incident.
There are drives we all remember that had no purpose whatsoever. No sat-nav. No timetable. Just fuel in the tank, music playing, and a road stretching out ahead. That feeling of freedom, flow, and quiet joy is hard to explain, but it’s exactly what I’ve been exploring with my latest music. These songs aren’t about cars as objects, but about driving as an experience. While I’ve had a hand in shaping the lyrics and direction, the final songs and visuals are AI-generated, using the technology as a creative collaborator.
Continue reading “New Songs by BCG – Nowhere to Be & Apex Thrill”
Everything looks real. Until it isn’t. Cars, content, even people are now being designed, edited and improved by artificial intelligence – and the automotive world may never look the same again. If you’ve found yourself squinting at your phone lately thinking “Hang on… is that real?”, congratulations. You are officially living in the age of artificial intelligence.
Not the flying-cars, robot-butlers kind. No. This is the more unsettling version. The one where cars are being designed by algorithms, photos are being “improved” beyond recognition, videos are faked convincingly enough to fool journalists, and voices can be cloned while their owners are fast asleep. Welcome to the great reality wobble.
Stardate: Right-Here-Right-Now
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved Star Trek. Not because of the phasers, photon torpedoes, or the occasional red-shirt casualty (though let’s be honest, those were fun too). No – it was the future it promised. A future built on intellect, compassion, curiosity, and progress. A future where humanity finally grew up, stopped arguing about nonsense, cured disease, ended hunger, explored the stars – and had the decency to put cup holders on shuttlecraft.
Continue reading “The Future We Promised Ourselves – And Why We’re Not at Warp Yet”