...the last "Grand Tour" on Wednesday. This is the series with Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond, a petrol-head partnership that began some 22 years ago now.

This special is their last collaboration; Clarkson and May are both in their '60s now with Hammond not far behind, so retirement from such arduous content (cars at that level do beat you up a bit; I can certainly speak to that!) is kind of inevitable.

I've watched these three be idiots since the beginning, so I admit a piece of my life is over, too. Rarely does such chemistry happen. I've enjoyed the ride immensely and probably just as idiotically.

Clarkson occasionally breaks character from being an overbearing baboon and says something deeply profound and he did it here. He spoke not only of the end of their run as a threesome being the inevitable result of age, but also because the genre itself has become obsolete.

We've lived in the Age of the Motorcar, a machine that for many of us is part of our soul. BBC recognises this and has quietly decided to end "Top Gear" after Flintoff's mishap as well. Both the Beeb and Clarkson are right.

Electric cars are now our future and pretty much everything made today including the internal combustion offerings are, as Clarkson termed them, "white goods". They are soulless appliances, laptops with wheels, and the two younger generations only see them as a necessary expense, a hideous one, too. No fun, nothing to celebrate, just another great whacking bill that gives nothing back to make that bill worth paying. I hate them with every fibre of my being.

There are some last gasps out there, but for every remotely fun car offered there are a hundred Teslas and a hundred thousand Hyundai school-runners. The future is transport by appliances, and there is nothing to be an enthusiast over.

So not only is this magical partnership over, the genre is over, and the era is over. I am grateful to have lived in a time when I could be a part of it, I'm grateful to those three for the 22 years of televised lunacy and fun, and I admit the future doesn't look very bright without all of it.

I feel old.