Presenter Richard Hammond, 53, grew up in Solihull and worked on local radio stations before getting his break on Top Gear in 2002. While filming in 2006 he had a high-speed car crash that left him in a coma for two weeks. In 2015, he started The Grand Tour on Prime Video with Jeremy Clarkson and James May. He lives in Herefordshire with his wife, Mindy, and their two children.
My wife says I was the nicest I’ve ever been when I was suffering from post-traumatic amnesia. I have no memory at all of the first few weeks I was in hospital in 2006, because my brain wasn’t writing down memories. Apparently I would sit and read the same newspaper again and again. They’d ask me what I wanted for lunch, then bring it, and I’d say, “How did you know?” I had no functioning moment-to-moment memory. The medium term still isn’t brilliant.
I wish I’d been thrown out of sixth form for something heroic, but they’d simply had enough of me. I was just irritating. I was a small kid for my year and very quickly learnt to make myself bigger and noisier than I really was. Weirdly, I never liked being in trouble or that feeling of, “Oh, I’m going to get it for that.”
My car flipped, landed upside down and burst into flames up a Swiss mountain. That was the last proper crash I had [in 2017, filming The Grand Tour]. Two people came along and I said, “Pull me by my arms — my leg is broken. Just get me away from the car,” because the fire was starting. I ran a systems check: did I know my name? Date? Where I was? Yes, OK, everything’s all right. So then I rang my wife: “Hello, darling. A few limbs broken, nothing that won’t mend. But you’re going to see it on social media. Don’t be shocked.” I don’t want to have to make that call again. That would be my third strike.
When people meet me, they’re disappointed because of my dull personality. But mostly I’m a disappointment to them because they’re expecting some pint-sized package you can hang on a Christmas tree. Then they see I’m 5ft 7in, a fairly nondescript height. I just work with two very tall blokes.
If I drink red wine I mustn’t act on any decisions I make. Because they will be driven by a massive imbalance in that bucket of soup up there. Since I had a frontal lobe injury, I have to be careful with food, drink, exercise. These things all affect our neurochemical balances. If you spend enough time staring through rain-streaked hospital windows, questioning your emotional state, sanity and functionality, you do think about this.
I was away from the kids far too much. It’s hard. I remember sitting in a rainforest with a young camera operator — he’d just had his first child and was really upset. I said to him, as a parent your job isn’t just to physically be there and fend off wolves. If you’re doing incredible things, they might be inspired to follow their own dreams. It’s true, but it’s not the same as being there.
I learnt to be irritating early on to try to make people laugh. And I’d step towards problems — nine times out of ten, if somebody bigger than you is picking on you at school and you step right up to them, they step away. As the eldest of three brothers I had to stand up for myself.
When I had my 2006 crash, I was convinced that was the end. We’re all aware of our mortality; we just don’t know when [we will die]. It was like suddenly getting the answer to the question, I wonder when I’ll die? Oh, it’s now. I suspect I’m still in the grip of a monumental midlife crisis. Turning 50 was a tricky one. I’m technically a grown-up, although I don’t really feel like one. I say to my daughter, “You’re still the same person in your twenties and fifties. You don’t feel any different.”
- The Grand Tour: Eurocrash launches on Prime Video on June 16
Written by: Georgina Roberts
© The Times of London