James May interview and exclusive book extract

James May, Telegraph columnist and unreconstructed bloke, tells Bryony Gordon why men are not useless – and, in an exclusive extract from his new book, he reveals how to land an A330 airbus.

Perfect man: Bryony Gordon chats to James May
Perfect man: Bryony Gordon chats to James May Credit: Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

In what strange parallel universe have I found myself? What bizarre dream-world is this, where James May – shaggy-haired Top Gear presenter, pilot of light aircraft, exploder of things, and one of television’s last unreconstructed men (see also: Jeremy Clarkson, Gene Hunt and, er, that’s it) – is teaching me how to make a bed?

I know how to make a bed, I harrumph. May surveys me from behind sawdust-covered tresses – the only “product” allowed near his unruly head (unlike Richard Hammond or Clarkson, he claims). Everything in the TV studio is covered in sawdust. He has been building a bar complete with real ale on tap – of course he has – and fixing a motorbike (naturally), and he has also been blasting wasps and flies with a contraption specially created by him and his production team, as you do if you are a 47-year-old man with a mortgage on a house in west London. Hence the mess.

“So far as I can tell, there is no point to either wasps or flies,” muses May. “So it’s OK to blow them up. We’d never harm a bee though. And later we are going to shoot some pigeons.” “We’ll make pigeon pie,” pipes up one of the production team, smoking a cigarette outside. I give May an are-you-serious look. He parries it with one that says, defiantly: “Yes, I am.”

The testosterone in the studio is such that simply walking into it could probably make you pregnant. But in an emasculated world May’s manliness is refreshing, attractive even, sitting as it does with a gentlemanly chivalry that is evident as he de-sawdusts my chair and offers me a ginger beer (he likes this drink because it makes you do “huge burps”). Still, I’m surprised when May tries to tell me how to make a bed.

“Do you really know how to make one?” he says. “Hospital corners and everything? The undersheet should be so tight you could bounce a coin off the centre of it…” The man can make even bed-linen sound blokey.

James May is Everyman; you could pass him on the street and probably not notice. In fact, on our way to the interview, we do just that. This is bizarre, given that the man is as ubiquitous as Simon Cowell. There’s the small matter of Top Gear, sold to more than 100 countries across the globe, but then there’s all the other stuff: James May on the Moon, a BBC documentary commemorating the 40th anniversary of the space landing; James May’s Toy Stories, in which he made a life-size house out of Lego, a garden out of Plasticine, a giant Scalextric and a huge Airfix model of a Spitfire; and, this Christmas, Man Lab, in which he tells blokes how to do things – fix a motorbike, build a bar, or most controversially, make their own bed.

The show is a spin-off from a new book May has written (astonishingly, his 12th). How to Land an A330 Airbus, and Other Vital Skills for the Modern Man does exactly what it says on the tin; it is one of those rare books that you can, and probably should, judge by its cover. So as well as informing 21st-century boys how to land huge planes, he also imparts such valuable advice as: how to invade and occupy the Isle of Wight, how to fight a duel, and how to prepare and eat your best friend (you go for the muscly areas, apparently, not the fat bits). There’s even a chapter that tells men how to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (May studied music at Lancaster University).

Also in the book: how to deliver twins. Did he actually do this? “Well no, but I have been at a few births.” May, who lives with his partner, the dance critic Sarah Frater, has no children himself, but he once worked in a women’s hospital and, bored with the filing job, he asked to go and witness a few operations.

He says that most of the scenarios in the book are “fantasy land situations”, but the childbirth thing is “more likely than we imagine…I find it odd that even women have to wait until they are pregnant to learn about it”.

The book came about because May was “bored with the portrayal of men as endearingly hopeless. The depiction on television and stuff” – and here I make no mention of the buffoonery of Top Gear – “is that 'blokes are useless’. But I think women especially are bored of blokes being useless.”

I nod in agreement.

“So I felt that needed to be addressed: the idea that anything a man tries to do properly or thoroughly is dismissed as either metrosexual or OCD. But why can’t you be practical and artistic at the same time, which was considered perfectly normal in the Renaissance? Men think that not being able to wire a plug some how makes them more creative or intellectual.” He takes a swig of his ginger beer. “It just makes them morons.”

May can talk for hours about things: the cheese grater he bought 28 years ago (“one of the most perfectly executed machines”); concrete furniture (“I just think it looks very funky”); putting up wallpaper (“It’s actually quite interesting to watch someone doing it”).

Is James May the perfect man? As he witters on – “there’s a great deal of poetry in working out how things work, cutting bits of metal, trying to mend stuff” – I think that weirdly, perhaps he is.

Exclusive extract

The crew has been murdered or laid out by manky prawns from the in-flight meal, and the aircraft is at 38,000ft, pilotless. It can stay there until the fuel runs out and it falls to earth, or you can seize the controls from the expired captain and bring it in to rapturous acclaim, and probably a refund.

First, make your way to the flight deck and discover that the door leading to it is locked. This has been a requirement since 9/11; even in the midst of this melodrama it is worth pausing for a second to reflect on the deep irony of it all. A cabin attendant should be able to unlock it for you.

Assuming the aircraft is in the cruise, the autopilot will almost certainly be engaged and you can take time to familiarise yourself with “the office”. The captain of a fixed-wing aircraft sits on the left – that is where you should sit.

Now you must make your emergency call to air traffic control and for this you will need the aircraft’s call sign, which will be displayed on the panel in front of you on a small plaque. Let’s say we are aboard G-ABCD. Put on the headset and depress the PTT (Press To Talk) button on the joystick. Now, and in a voice that is calm, level, clipped, clear, unhurried, tinged with icy resolve , say : “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Golf Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta. Pilot and first officer disabled. I am a passenger, I have taken control and I await your instructions.”

The international language of air traffic control is English, so even over the Greek islands whoever is listening will be shaken from his or her diurnal torpor by your textbook professionalism.

While the controller desperately rings around in search of someone who can help you over the radio, relax. Remember – the autopilot is still on and the autopilot is your best friend. At the very least, it is a much better pilot than you are.

You could even press the PA button, talk to the passengers and advise them of the outside air temperature. Don’t worry about getting the temperature exactly right – minus 32C will do – as they don’t actually care, but the calming effect of pilot babble will be welcomed in the cheap seats.

The small screen directly ahead of you shows, from left to right, the air speed indicator, or ASI (how fast you’re going), the attitude indicator (or artificial horizon), the altimeter (how high you are) and the vertical speed indicator (how quickly you’re climbing or descending). Along the bottom is the direction indicator (your compass heading). Keep the speed between the two red “bugs” at the top and bottom of the scale on the ASI. Above the top one the aircraft could fall apart; below the bottom one and it will stall and fall out of the sky, in accordance with Newton. Speeds are in knots.

The next thing you will probably have to do is retune the radio, most likely to the international distress frequency of 121.50.

Airbus Industries’ flawless control logic says that when the knobs are pulled out, control rests with the pilot. When they are pushed in, it rests with the preprogrammed flight computer. Therefore, pull them out when instructed to make inputs, otherwise the aircraft will blithely continue to head where it was already going.

You are now ready to fly the Airbus to an airport, under instruction from the controller, using the autopilot. There are just three knobs to worry about here, and they control airspeed, heading and altitude.

Simply twirl the knobs until the values given by the controller appear on the digital display. By this means you will be able to fly the aeroplane to an airport with no more difficulty than you would have in setting the timer on a microwave oven. But don’t tell anyone.

If air traffic control has any sense – and these people are generally selected for their intelligence and cool-headedness – they will have directed you to an airport that will allow you to use the Airbus’s Instrument Landing System (ILS). If you have been vectored to a remote runway on a disused airbase where you have to land the aeroplane manually, you may as well forget it, because, as one A330 captain put it: “Everyone will be killed.”

As you make your way on autopilot to the airport, you will have to programme the ILS in the cockpit using the Multi-purpose Control and Display Unit, or MCDU, or “McDoo” in the chummy lexicon of real pilots. This is near your right knee.

By now, control will have instructed you to descend using the autopilot and you will be nearing 3,000ft. It is time to slow the Airbus down for the final approach. Using the speed knob on the autopilot, gently wind the airspeed down until it is about 10 knots above the lower red “bug” on the ASI. Now select the first stage of flap, using the conveniently flap-shaped lever.

With the wings now generating more lift, that lower bug on the ASI will move to a lower speed. Repeat the above process for the second stage of flap – slow to 10 knots above the bug, pull the lever.

Control will give you a frequency and heading for the ILS of the airport; in the case of London Heathrow, it will be 109.5/272. On the McDoo, press the button marked RAD/NAV. Enter the frequency and heading with the keypad and, when they appear on the screen, press the little button alongside. The ILS is now programmed but not yet active.

Next, control will direct you to intercept something called QDM, which is the heading to the runway. Again, this is a simple matter of twiddling the knobs on the autopilot. Once flying straight and level on the right heading, you can initiate the ILS you programmed earlier. Just press the button marked APPR (for “approach”) on the autopilot and the Airbus will make its own way to the runway.

But there is still much work for you to do before attaining glory. Lower the undercarriage using the lever over on the first officer’s side. Three green lights on the display above will confirm that it is down and locked. Next, and after reducing the airspeed to around 15 knots above the lower bug, deploy the final two stages of flap. The aircraft will seem to you to be travelling absurdly slowly towards the runway, which should now be visible. Resist the urge to push the throttles open or pull back on the joystick.

At the runway threshold, the nose will also seem to be pointing too far down. Again, do not interfere. It will “flare” automatically; that is, lift its nose to increase lift just before touchdown and lower the rate of descent. As soon as the main wheels make contact with the runway, pull the two throttles back until they will go no further, the “idle” position. The end of the runway will tilt into view and the nose wheel will touch down.

All that remains is to stop. Press with your toes on the rudder pedals to work the wheel brakes. At the same time, lift the small levers on the back of the throttles, which will allow them to move further backwards. This triggers reverse thrust from the engines. Once the aeroplane has slowed to a brisk trot, return the throttles to idle and come to a halt using your feet.

Apply the parking brake, shut down the engines by lifting and twisting the knobs marked ENG 1 and ENG 2, press the PA button and say: “Cabin crew, doors to manual.” If you have landed at Barcelona it is permissible to say “Cabin crew, doors to Manuel.” It’s an old joke, but tensions will be so high that you’re guaranteed a laugh.

  • © James May, 2010. Author’s disclaimer: This guide has been prepared only for use in absolute, dire, buttock-clenching emergency.
  • How to Land an A330 Airbus and Other Vital Skills for the Modern Man by James May (Hodder & Stoughton) is available from Telegraph Books for £18 plus £1.25 p&p. Visit books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1515