Did we like it?

A hopelessly out-of-date ramble by Richard Hammond that was as timely and palatable as a piece of chewing gum stuffed down the sofa two years ago.

What was good about it?

• Richard Hammond was his usual chirpy self as he embarked on a vague quest to discover why boys don’t read as much anymore and why there aren’t more “derring do” adventures that he so enjoyed in his youth.

What was bad about it?

• The whole escapade had a shoddy improvised structure that seemed to twist and turn on an impulsive whim as it sauntered aimlessly up cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac. At the start, Hammond questioned why boys were reading 15% less than they used to, which was a promising start.

• But then he made his first error. Instead of venturing bravely into the working class heartlands of this decline, he visited the very posh prep school where his brother teaches English and drama. Far from being confronted by a hive of surly, snotty teenagers, he had a polite discussion with a committee of immaculately-behaved boys who all read studiously, thus blowing his notions the illiterate British schoolboy out of the water.

• Probing a little deeper, Hammond discovered that although they read the boys preferred playing football, computer games and messing about with their friends – three answers that he would have received 25 years ago. And that was the last we heard of any external factors affecting why boys are reading less.

• And the boys hardly helped him with their vague, uneducated notions of why their peers may spend less time with their heads in books. One piped up that because more books were being made into films there was less of an incentive to read as though he was confident the concept of turning books into films had begun in 2001 with Lord of the Rings.

• Author of the Alex Rider novels Anthony Horowitz claiming that: “Modern boys want to have the right trainers, the right skateboard and the right clothes; it’s all about branding.” This may be true, but such choices are largely arbitrary, fleeting and insignificant.

• In order to validate his clarion call for more adventure books for boy, Hammond clumsily employed the last resort of someone who has a weak argument, exaggerate the apparent abhorrence of his nemesis – which in this case was books that contain an iota of emotion. “In this modern touchy-feely world,” he sneered, “where we’re all in touch with our sensitive side.” Most people don’t have ‘sensitive sides’ that need to be flipped like fast food burgers; most people develop sensitivity as a natural part of growing up. The phrase ‘sensitive side’ was only ever coined to plead the case that anachronistic boorish yobs, such as Hammond’s cohort Jeremy Clarkson, are actually human and not the inherently belligerent hybrid offspring of some gruesome breeding programme with baboons.

• The programme was very old. You began to suspect something was up when Hammond appeared, meaning it was obviously filmed before his accident. And then each chapter revealed something that indicated it was even older than previously thought. Firstly, it was mentioned that the Alex Rider book was going to be made into a film, which it was – last year. And then Richard pointed out that there was a “CD-ROM” on the cover of one of Garth Nix’s books. So we scanned the credits, and there it was BBC MMIX – three years old.

• The inappropriateness of some of those experts who Hammond spoke to. The worst, or best, was Natasha Walter who chewed up his feeble arguments and in doing so rendered valueless Richard’s vague masculine posturing of the previous 25 minutes.