Jeremy Clarkson and Christian Horner team up to raise £1m

Mr Clarkson, who lives in Oxfordshire, hosted a fundraising auction for Sir Chris’s Tour de 4 charity at a clay pigeon shoot in Northamptonshire, organised by Mr Horner, who lives near the Oxfordshire border close to Banbury.

The event, held at the Marston Estate, raised £1 million in a single afternoon, with much of the final total coming from an extraordinary intervention by Mr Clarkson, as The Times reports.

Speaking on his Sporting Misadventures podcast, Sir Chris, 50, said: “Jeremy Clarkson did the auction at the Tour de 4 clay shoot that Christian Horner put on and we raised £1 million in an afternoon.

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“We got to £850,000 with all the tickets and the tables and the auction, and they wanted to hit £1 million.”

At that point, Mr Clarkson turned to the guests who had flown in by helicopter and asked for £10,000 from each of them.

Sir Chris revealed: “Jeremy said, ‘Right, there are people here who have arrived in helicopters.

“‘Everyone here who has got a helicopter, I want ten grand.’ So he went around the room going, ‘Ten grand from you, ten grand from you,’ and he got £150,000 from people, and that’s what made it up to £1 million.

“It was astonishing. I don’t think anybody else would have got away with doing that, but he has that presence. It was a fantastic afternoon, really good fun.”

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Sir Chris, a six-time Olympic gold medallist, founded the Tour de 4 cycle challenge after being diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer.

He has since become a high-profile campaigner for better screening and awareness, using the event to “change the perception” of what it means to live with an advanced cancer diagnosis.

Mr Clarkson, known for Top Gear, The Grand Tour and Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm, revealed earlier this year that he had undergone surgery for an aggressive form of prostate cancer after it was picked up in a routine medical.

He has since said he is in remission and urged men to get checked.

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Tour de 4 will return to Glasgow this September, starting and finishing at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.

The inaugural ride attracted more than 5,000 participants and raised over £3 million for cancer charities, with this year’s event again supporting Macmillan Cancer Support, Breast Cancer Now, Cure Leukaemia, Prostate Cancer UK and Maggie’s.

Mr Hoy has said his diagnosis has changed the way he looks at each day. Speaking earlier this year, he reflected: “I never imagined that I’d be able to get to this point where I’m actually just living life and not just living life, but actually appreciating it more than ever.

“It’s just about appreciating the mundane fun of life, the mundane elements of life which can be wonderful.”