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Top Gear 2016: William Hill reveals not one person bet on Matt LeBlanc hosting

And if they did, it would have been at 500/1 odds. 

Clarisse Loughrey
Thursday 04 February 2016 15:03 GMT
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Matt LeBlanc joins Chris Evans on the Top Gear line-up with another presenter still to be announced
Matt LeBlanc joins Chris Evans on the Top Gear line-up with another presenter still to be announced (BBC)

Anyone in possession of a time machine, you're about to make yourself a millionaire. Turns out, no one saw Matt LeBlanc's hire as Top Gear's second presenter. Literally no one; William Hill has announced that not a single bet was requested for the Friends star.

"This is an astonishing bit of secret keeping – nobody predicted Matt Le Blanc and if anyone had enquired we would have made him a 500/1 outsider," stated William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams. "At 500/1 it only takes £2000 to rack up a million pound payout– so we are thanking our lucky stars that news did not leak as the industry could have been hit by six or even seven figure liabilities.."

Sure, LeBlanc may seem a surreal hire, but prognosticators were offered a couple of clues as to their future hire's identity. LeBlanc still holds the record for the 'fastest ever lap' in the show's reasonably priced car competition, even briefly taking up hosting duties for spin-off Top Gear: The Races, which ran through the most memorable moments of the past 22 series. So, really, there was no excuse for this.

LeBlanc will join Chris Evans as co-presenter of the BBC show, leaving a third and final space open for... who knows. The only information attained is that the third co-presenter will definitely be female, with German professional racing driver Sabine Schmitz currently at 1/3, 5/1 for Suzi Perry, 8/1 Natalie Pinkham, 8/1 Rebecca Jackson, and 25/1 Sue Perkins.

If you're feeling adventurous, however, you can now plump for any of the female Friends cast, with Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, and Courteney Cox all at 100/1 odds.

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