Top Gear boys in their most arduous challenge to date: a 450-mile race across the Arctic to the North Pole.

And, to shake things up a bit, the traditional 'Jeremy in a supercar v James and Hammond on grotty public transport' head-to-head has been dispensed with. Instead, the Polar Challenge sees JC and Captain Slow armed with a heavily modified Toyota Hilux taking on Richard... and a team of Inuit sled-dogs.

Discover more about TG's polar-modified Toyota Hilux

Sounds like an easy ride for Jeremy and James then? Apparently not.

"Don't imagine that we were nice and warm in the car," James told us this week. "We weren't allowed to have the heating on because it would interfere with our special misery-spec Arctic on-board cameras."

In fact, it doesn't sound like James had much fun. "I didn't actually want to go at all," he says. "I hate snow, I hate extreme cold, I hate dressing up and I knew it would involve quite a lot of camping, since there are no hotels around there."

Despite the risks of being eaten by polar bears - the Arctic is home to 80 per cent of the world's population, and apparently pasty British TV presenters taste almost identical to seal - it was the camping that proved the most traumatic for James.

"I hardly dare remind myself of the camping," he says. "The real problem was having to share a tent with Clarkson, who was incapable of helping to put the thing up. I'm not a great camper but Clarkson is a worse one."

In-tent hostilities were just the, erm, tip of the iceberg. Countless hours behind the wheel of the Hilux with nothing but ice for scenery took their toll on Jeremy and James's relationship.

"After a few days we were arguing for hours about the significance of just-in-time manufacturing versus the importance of interchangeability of parts," says James. "By day four we had been reduced to food fantasies involving sandwich spread and sausages."

Hammond, on the other hand, seems quite cheery following his open-air expedition. He even had time to make a special canine friend - not in that way - a ginger mutt called Bartlett who started fights with all the other dogs. Canadian Inuit dogs aren't meant to be ginger. Maybe that explains the fightiness.

So did the dogs beat the invincible Hilux to the North Pole? In fact, did any of our intrepid presenters get there at all, or did they fail in a flurry of razor-sharp ice, gaping crevasses and al fresco toilet breaks?