Jeremy Clarkson makes a cardboard box MORE popular than ‘New’ Top Gear (+video)

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have been building DHL cardboard boxes. And their videos are proving a huge hit online.

The first episode of the ‘New’ Top Gear with Chris Evans didn’t get the greatest reception in the world, but it did attract a big enough audience – especially when you count catch-up and other digital views – for Evans to hold his head up and declare his Top Gear is more successful than ‘old’ Top Gear.

But the wheels fell off that argument somewhat when the second episode of the show – which was actually better than the first – aired to an audience that had shrunk to just 14 per cent audience share – beaten by Antiques Roadshow and SoccerAid – although Evans is still adamant his ratings prove the show’s a success.

But even Chris Evans is going to find it hard to explain how a video of Jeremy Clarkson building a DHL box is so popular it will probably have been seen by more viewers by the weekend than the last episode of his Top Gear.

With the old Top Gear presenters now in the commercial world with Amazon Prime and The Grand Tour, sponsors have to be kept happy. And DHL are sponsoring The Grand Tour, so Clarkson (and Hammond and May) have been filming themselves putting together a DHL despatch box.

A series of ‘DHL Box Challenge’ videos have been posted by James May on his ‘Unemployment Tube’ account, with the one showing Jeremy’s efforts already getting more than 1.2 million views in just a couple of days.

Which, by minutes of running time,  already makes it at least ten times more popular than Chris Evans’ Top Gear.

Jeremy Clarkson DHL Box Challenge Video