While those in motor sport who have followed Pascal Wehrlein are busy informing the outside world about F1's latest driver, the world beyond the paddock fence wants to know exactly who Eddie Jordan is. The best advice is not to ask EJ, simply because he won't know the answer to either question. Of course, he won't actually admit that.
The need for his opinion about young Wehrlein would have been preceded by a quick phone call to a reliable source. The conversation would have gone along these lines: "Jayzus, I'm in a spot of bother. Have you a moment? I'm in the back of a cab to the BBC and they're gonna ask me about this Weird Line fella, or whatever he's called. What's the story?" Then he'll step into the studio and talk not only at length and with confidence but also give the impression -- without actually saying it -- that he personally advised Wehrlein to take the job after watching him climb the career path he, Jordan, has just outlined with a practised and polished brass neck. The discourse may have rambled at times but it will always be entertaining if not thoroughly convincing. A prerequisite for Top Gear, I would have thought.
As to answering a question about himself, any number of replies could be forthcoming. He could speak at length about being a bank clerk in Dublin, arranging loans for the purchase of a car and ending up selling the unsuspecting customer the exact model they're looking for after a couple of furtive calls (in the bank's time, of course) to similarly opportunist mates in the shady end of the city's motor trade.
Or he could tell you about selling carpet offcuts by the side of the road in an attempt to fund his early racing. Or about the time he broke a leg very badly while testing his kart -- but only thanks to one eejit coming the other way because he'd suddenly got bored with going round and round in the same direction as anyone else. All perfectly true -- and told in a colourful manner enhanced by words he didn't learn in Sunday School and spun in that classic Dublin brogue.
And all of this before he even gets on to being a quick driver -- which he was -- in Formula Atlantic and F3. And then the story we all know about: the remarkable rise from top entrant in F3 for the likes of Martin Brundle and Johnny Herbert to the owner of a F1 team that built its own cars and won four Grands Prix.
What you might not know -- and, for once, this is a subject EJ might not elaborate on -- is that he has raised millions for charity, specifically, CLIC Sargent (Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood). He did that by using a twinkle in the eye, quick humour and startling cheek to persuade the good and the great from music and sport to come and have a bit of the craic (a fun time) while parting with money he most certainly knows the value of.
Is he ready for the leading TV role? I never thought he was particularly at home facing the camera in the F1 paddock. For a start, he was frequently being asked questions for which he didn't have the answer; a shortcoming immediately made obvious by a round-the-houses ramble that ended talking about something else.
For another thing, he thrives on a live audience, as those of us fortunate -- or unfortunate if you weren't ready for it -- got to know when he hurled tongue-in-cheek insults at all and sundry at press conferences or over the not-to-be-missed Jordan Grand Prix breakfasts.
I first had experience of the effortless effrontery when joining EJ for a Jordan F1 book signing session in a Dublin store. The queue went round the block and the shop had to send folk out to rob other book stores of their supplies. But that's not the point. Throughout, he kept up a hilarious dialogue with the punters -- particularly the female fans. When one replied 'Mary' in response to being asked for her name, she fell about when he looked up and said: "Jayzus! Are you the Mary I remember in the back of a Ford Cortina one night on Dollymount Strand?" All said shamelessly, but without a hint of licentiousness.
He'll have to keep that sort of thing in check in his new role, of course. This is a purely personal view but the previous self-indulgent Top Gear presenters had long passed their view-by date. It was time for EJ to make a change, too. The BBC are taking the sort of punt Eddie would have approved of -- in whatever role he cares to tell you about.