On the screen:: more angry car movies, and Joey joins Top Gear

The human embodiment of a cannonball has offered little in the way of plot details at this early stage, although he confirmed some dates: April 19, 2019, and April 2, 2021.

As for the eighth film, that’s due to collide with cinemas on April 14, 2017.

Moving on.

Matt LeBlanc, star of TV sitcoms Friends, Episodes, and the film Lost in Space - which this writer maintains is roughly half of a good film - will join radio jockey Chris Evans as co-host of the rebuilt Top Gear series.

You can chuckle, you can scoff, but it’s a solid move: folks will tune in at least once to see if the first foreign presenter of the original UK Top Gear series has what it takes. And, the thing is, he does.

Joey’s been on the show as a guest once before, beating out known car enthusiast Mr Bean in 2012 for the top spot on the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car leaderboard, and he returned the following year to perform laps in both the old and new Reasonably-Priced cars.

This year, LeBlanc also hosted a special collected edition of Top Gear’s races, dubbed, of course, “The Races”. You might imagine that, looking back, this was a clever hint at the actor’s future plans…

Like any decent former A-list actor (he was A-list, right? Right? Ladies?), LeBlanc has owned his share of cars: “Oh, I’ve got a couple of different ones. I have a Mercedes (ML63), a Porsche (911), a Ferrari (360), a Ford... big truck, and a couple of scooters”.

He’s no Chris Harris, and he’s definitely no Sabine Schmitz, but if we think of LeBlanc as Top Gear’s new Hamster… this might work out.

Still, he won’t be the final addition to the roster: announcing his appointment today, the BBC also said that “additional cast members will be confirmed shortly”. Unless that’s a typo, we can look forward to not one but two - at least two - more names to be announced.

Could Top Gear be getting a larger ensemble cast? Hell, why not. If you can't match quality, you might as well go for quantity.