Interviews with Richard

[dit]

There doesn't seem to be a thread solely for this subject, so I thought I'd start one!

Richard's interview starts on page 6 (and there's also one with James on page 26).


content.yudu.com/A1wbxt/Rev5/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=

[dit]

Interview in a South African paper


www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/we-interview-top-gear-s-hamster-1.1310814

[RedMoon11]

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond: My first motorbike was a rebellion against the adult world

Richard Hammond, 43, started as Jeremy Clarkson’s Top Gear sidekick but is now ubiquitous on TV. His new collection of memoirs is out now.

What’s the book about? It’s looking at growing up by examining the journeys I took between the ages of six and 21 – going on holiday or cycling to school – and getting into the mindset of what my concerns were at those ages.

What were your concerns? When I was six it was screaming boredom, fighting with my two brothers for space in the car, examining the texture of the seats and dreaming of going into space. As I was cycling to school, it was being self-conscious about my school cap or thinking about the inner workings of the bicycle. As I got my first motorbike, it was a rebellion against the adult world as a 16-year-old on a 50cc moped. I was a maniac when I was 17 and got my first car – I’m not proud but I looked at what makes you drive like a maniac at that age.

Was it a nice trip down memory lane? It was bloody fascinating. I drove the route from Harrogate to Ripon, which is what used to be my race track, I’m ashamed to say, and my memory sprang off as I passed places I used to work in or go to parties at. I’d recommend anyone to give it a go.

What was your first car? A 1976 Toyota Corolla liftback. My parents bought it for my 18th birthday but the car didn’t make it to my birthday because I wrote it off beforehand. I crashed it into another car. It was old and fragile and never really worked again. It was heartbreaking. I had my independence and then blew it. I went back to motorbikes until, at 21, I was driving around in a company van.

You’ve been busy with two wildlife shows and Builds A Planet. Yes, I did BBC Planet Earth Live, which was hard work, and Miracles Of Nature. It was my own production and I won the Jackson Hole award for Best Presenter-led Programme. That was really pleasing, as they’re the Oscars of natural history programming.

Are you worried you’re spreading yourself a bit thin? No, because they’re things I’m interested in. I’d love to do more natural history but it’s difficult to make the move because of what I do with Top Gear. I was proud of Miracles Of Nature because it turned out to be exactly what I wanted to make. I’ve done less than I did last year. You also don’t know how long things will last and when you’ll need to do something new. It is my job. I’m 43. My girls are 13 and ten – I need to keep working for a long time yet.

There’s no sign Top Gear’s going anywhere, is there? No, but nothing lasts forever. It’s grown every year and the global audience is growing at a fantastic rate.

Where’s it big? Wherever we film. It’s massive in Ukraine; we couldn’t get out of the hotel in the morning because people wanted to see us. We did Top Gear Live in Poland and filled the national stadium. We’re very lucky. The subject is endlessly appealing – it’s had a 50 per cent female audience for as long as we’ve been doing it and it appeals to kids, adults, people who are interested in cars, people who don’t give a crap about cars. Cars are inspirational or seen as bad or as something to flaunt your wealth, your sporting aspirations or your lack of interest in cars with by driving a Prius.

Is natural history a very competitive area of TV? It’s a broad subject. It’s an amazing field with some real specialists. There are seasoned experts working in that field.

Why do some people hate Top Gear? As a subject, it’s incredibly broad and affects a huge number of people. How we present it will never appeal to everyone and we’d be doing something wrong if we did – it would be too bland. I understand how some people could be alienated by our personalities.

Did you see any of the celebrities getting injured when you hosted Total Wipeout? There were three ambulances on permanent standby making that. I didn’t go out there very often, I just commentated on it and I loved it. I saw the footage of the injuries – Joe Swash dislocating his shoulder, for example.

What are you most proud of in your career? Being part of something that has done as well as Top Gear. Miracles Of Nature winning the Jackson Hole award. There’s been loads of things – working with incredible people at the top of their game.

What about the stunts you’ve done? Riding a dog sled at the North Pole was incredible. Travelling, not as a tourist, and getting to meet people who live and work in those places is a very insightful thing. I’m a bugger to go on holiday with, I’m always saying: ‘Why can’t I go in that building and have a look around?’ because I do so with work.

On The Road: Growing Up In Eight Journeys – My Early Years (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is out now.
metro.co.uk/2013/12/13/top-gears-richard-hammond-my-first-motorbike-was-a-rebellion-against-the-adult-world-4228650/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond says: 'I Suffered From Impossible Arrogance’

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond has softened since his brush with death – just don’t make him admit that Jeremy Clarkson is a friend

Richard Hammond: 'Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I’m cute and nice – I can be quite unpleasant and ill-tempered.'

By Matthew Stadlen 4:20PM GMT 22 Dec 2013

Richard Hammond is talking quickly and in capital letters. He’s worked up. He has his heart set on a De Tomaso Pantera sports car about to go under the hammer at Bonhams when we meet at Century Club in central London. “Oh God. It’s perfect. It’s ludicrous. Mid-engine like a Ferrari, like a Lamborghini, but it’s a massive Cleveland V8. I’m CONSUMED, CONVULSED with lust for it. I want it. DESPERATELY.” His voice turns to a conspiratorial whisper as he plots the purchase, before adding, “My daughters will HAATE it.”

One third of the triumvirate that makes up BBC Two’s hit show Top Gear, Hammond says he’s “had a bit of a thin-down” when I ask how many cars he has. He owns 28 bikes and “probably 10 cars, maybe more”. Some thin-down.

He’s lost none of his childhood enthusiasm for motorised transport. Cars, he explains, still make him feel funny in his tummy. “You can intellectualise it, of course, but I love them because they excite me, I love the way they make me feel. It’s visceral and basic.”

Hammond, who at 43 still has flowing brown hair, has just written his autobiography, tracing his journey from childhood in the West Midlands to early adulthood. For a Top Gear presenter, he believes, it’s actually quite sensitive, and involved him revisiting the route home to Ripon from college in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

“That was our race track, our proving ground. It’s where we drove dangerously and irresponsibly – as young males do.” He apologises now for the recklessness which he attributes to the “impossible arrogance and sense of immortality” of being 17.

“It wasn’t aggression in the sense that I wanted to hurt anyone. I would have been MORTIFIED if I’d killed anyone – which I could very easily have done. But that hormonal surge – there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re proving yourself, challenging yourself, challenging the world.”

The challenges, of course, did not end with adolescence. Nor did the risk-taking. In September 2006, aged 36, he suffered a serious head injury and brain damage on a Top Gear shoot, having crashed a dragster-style car capable of reaching about 300mph. He was taken by air ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary’s neurological unit and remained off screen, recuperating, until the end of the year.

Seven years on, he’s not aware of any lingering effects. The crash is “catalogued on my list of big experiences as we all have in our lives”. His memory of childhood, he insists, is still intact. “If anything, the crash dislodged a lot of the rubbish that had been laid down on top of it.”

Known to fans as ''The Hamster’’, Hammond was born in Shirley, West Midlands. The family moved to North Yorkshire when he was 15 and he was “booted out” of Ripon Grammar School for being a “tw–t”. He went instead to art and technical college. The autobiography ends aged 21 on what he describes now as a rather celebratory note.

“But then I spent the next 10 years slogging away in local radio and missed out on a lot of fun. I was trying to get my career going so I didn’t do a lot of stuff that 20-year-olds did. You need dedication – when luck comes calling, it’s often at 2am and it’s only because you’re still on the station editing a tape that you’re lucky enough to pick it up.”

As a five-year-old Hammond sat down with his dad and worked out how many days it was until he could drive a car. When he interviewed a motoring correspondent on Radio Lancashire he knew he wanted to combine two favourites – cars and broadcasting. After a year and a half in PR he gave up the company car, took in a lodger and got a job in TV making motoring shows.

Eventually he auditioned for Top Gear. Months went by and he gave up hope of landing the dream job. Then, the phone went. On hearing the news, he burst into tears before ringing back. “Did you mean me? Richard Hammond, the short bloke?

“Mindy and I went upstairs – it was 11 in the morning – and like a lot of couples we had a bottle of champagne in the fridge that had been given to us and was therefore too precious to drink – there’d never been a right time. So we thought, 'Sod it’, opened the bottle, sat on the wall in our little town garden and I just said to Min, 'This will change everything.’ And it did.”

Top Gear is a worldwide hit. “We’ve been filming in Ukraine – we couldn’t get out of our hotel in the morning for fans.” Next year the show will feature a trip to Burma.

Success has also been a passport to presenting natural history programmes. He recently picked up a Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival award for presenting Miracles of Nature: Super-Bodies.

So does he ask himself whether making a programme celebrating cars is the right thing to be doing environmentally? “No, honestly, honestly, no… The ability to move ourselves about, that’s fundamental, humans need it. The inevitability of then turning that into something competitive and flamboyant is also quintessentially human.

“A handful of freight ships create as much carbon monoxide in a year as all the cars in the world put together,” he says. “How much fuel do we burn in our homes when we could put on an extra jumper?”

Jeremy Clarkson was already long established on Top Gear when Hammond signed up to the revamped version 11 years ago. James May rejoined the programme a year later. Is he friends with them?

“I must be. We spend more time with one another than we spend with anybody else and we haven’t actually stabbed each other yet. We’re mates – that’s the word. And therefore I’d die before I’d describe them as friends and I’d hope they would, too. It’s challenging and difficult and competitive and bitchy. Long may it continue. If it was relaxed, that wouldn’t work.”

At 6ft 5in, Clarkson towers above the 5ft 7in Hammond. Does he bully him? “Oh God, yeah. But then I bully back. We annoy each other. We’re none of the three of us easy to be bullied.”

Hammond has no interest in celebrity lifestyle and lives in Ross-on-Wye – “people live there because they live there, they haven’t retired there because it’s posh”.

He and Mindy have two daughters. When he surprised them at school recently, after returning from a long trip away, the girls shed tears. It was, he says, one of the happiest days of his life.

“My wife will tell you I haven’t always been easy,” he says. “Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I’m cute and nice – I can be quite unpleasant and ill-tempered.”

Nevertheless, he seems at peace with himself. “Maybe we all feel more confident about returning to who we really are at centre as [we] get older. I feel closer now to the little boy I was in the book.”

'On the Road: Growing up in Eight Journeys – My Early Years’ by Richard Hammond (W&N, RRP £18.99) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £16.99 + £1.35 p&p. Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10533565/Richard-Hammond-says-I-suffered-from-impossible-arrogance.html

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond On Top Gear, Love At First Sight and Wanting To Be A Koala Bear


Richard Hammond is best known for hosting Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson and James May

The TV personality is famously known for working on Top Gear which celebrates its 21st series this month on BBC2. Here he tells us about the new series, his most romantic moments, working with and Jeremy Clarkson and James May and the last time he cried.

Richard , 44, has also hosted Total Wipeout and won a BAFTA for hit children’s science series Blast Lab. His new book, On The Road, which tells the story of his early life through a series of road journeys, is out now. Richard lives with his wife, Mindy, and their two daughters, Isabella, 13, and Willow, 10, in Herefordshire.

What’s the most memorable road trip you’ve been on?

On Top Gear I’ve trekked across polar landscapes, deserts and rainforests, but the journeys from child to adult, which I talk about in my book, really stick in the mind. When I was 16 I nagged my parents endlessly for a 50cc bike, until I came downstairs one morning and realised I had an actual motorcycle of my own. Those first journeys on my bike were the best; I’ll never recapture that feeling of freedom.

What can you reveal about the new series of Top Gear?

I can’t divulge much – sorry – but it contains some of the best scenes we’ve ever filmed. I’ve just got back from tearing around in Dubai in an incredibly exciting car, and we’ve got a special that’s bigger and better than anything we’ve done before.


Richard admits that the most romantic thing that ever happened to him was a surprise birthday party

What’s been the scariest moment of your career?

Being stalked by polar bears at the North Pole was alarming. They were very close and we had to sit up all night on guard to make sure none of us got eaten. Also, there have been various crashes and moments when I’ve thought, ‘This is it’.

When was the last time you cried?

A month ago. I’d been in Australia for five weeks, and had just one day at home before going off to the Ukraine. My wife knew I was home but we didn’t tell my daughters, then when I turned up at school to collect them they jumped into my arms and burst into tears. That pushed me over the edge.

What’s been your most surreal celebrity moment?

Walking out in front of over 57,000 people on Top Gear Live, in Poland’s national stadium in Warsaw.

What’s the most romantic thing anyone’s done for you?

My wife held an amazing surprise 40th birthday party for me. I was told to hand out an award at a ceremony, but when I walked through the curtains there was everybody I had known for the last 20 years.

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I must do, because that’s how I fell for Mindy.

What’s the most money you’ve blown in one go?

Don’t tell my wife but I’ve just bought a new Porsche 991 GT3.

Who would you like to swap places with for 24 hours?

A koala bear. They spend their lives hanging around, with no pressure at all.

On The Road (Orion Books, RRP £18.99) by Richard Hammond is out now. To order it send a cheque/PO payable to The Express, to Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF, call 0871 471 3466 or order it online at expressbooks.co.uk

www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/452920/Richard-Hammond-on-the-new-Top-Gear-love-at-first-sight-and-wanting-to-be-a-koala

[RedMoon11]

What I'd Do Differently: Richard Hammond

With Jeremy Clarkson and James May, Hammond, 42, hosts the BBC's Top Gear. We caught up with him recently while he was in the U.S. taping BBC America's Crash Course.

FEBRUARY 2012 l BY JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN l PHOTOGRAPHY BY BBC l ILLUSTRATION BY ZÉ OTAVIO

From the March 2012 issue of Car and Driver

C/D: You’ve been in the States for six weeks. Are you homesick for England?

RH: No. One, I brought my wife and daughters over for the middle two weeks. And also, I’m really enjoying coming here. I travel a lot for work, obviously. But because of the shared language, as far as that sharing goes, America seems in some ways more foreign than many of the other places I go. And I’ve wondered why. I’m sure it’s because of that shared language that we can cut to the chase and get to the subtleties that make your life different. If I’m in Italy or Japan, I just want to work out how to say “beer” and “laundry” in the hotel. Whereas in the States, very quickly you’re actually sitting with guys and talking about what their lives are like. What they do. What matters to them. What their hopes, aspirations, and fears are.

C/D: Top Gear is being watched more and more here. Are you being recognized?

RH: Surprisingly, yes. We set out to make the best car show we could 10 years ago. That’s all we set out to do. That’s all we still do. There was no artifice, no cynicism about its creation. We didn’t sit down and think, “If we get three guys with these personalities . . . and then we do this . . .” We really didn’t. It’s luck, time, place, context, audience. Things lined up, and it’s found a global audience. We’re very lucky. You can have many careers before one of them involves a hit on that scale. I’ve done this job for 23 years, and I’m a very lucky boy.

C/D: It’s a hit on anyone’s scale.

RH: It boggles our minds. But it hasn’t changed it, really. After I come back from this, I’ll be in the office the following week and we’ll be sitting down having the usual meeting we have at the beginning of the season, saying, “Where are we going, and what are we doing?” We’re not thinking, “If  we do this, it will appeal to a big audience across South Africa or Australia or New Zealand or wherever.” We just do what we do.

C/D: Isn’t the problem with the American Top Gear that it is by its nature an artifice? It’s following your example.

RH: When we set out to do our show, nobody gave a crap. It was a pokey little car show on BBC Two. Nobody swiveled around to see us. In Australia, our Top Gear is huge. So the poor guys down there, when they got their own version, the whole nation swivels around and has a look. They were under massive pressure. We were afforded the opportunity to evolve—and I’m going to use a television buzzword—organically. They let us do that because the audience wasn’t there. From all the comments I’m getting from Americans watching the American Top Gear, it’s getting there. Given a little bit of time, they’ll find their own characters, their own way of doing things, and they won’t be emulating ours.



C/D: Is Top Gear still about cars?

RH: Central to the show—always has been and always will be—are the cars. It has to be. The moment you neglect the gearheads, two things happen: One, they turn away and never forgive you. And two, the credibility of the show, the believability of it, the thing upon which the whole thing pivots, is gone. There is no magic. Because, suddenly, we’d then be three guys saying, “Hey, we’re going to goof around and do silly stuff.”  You’ll never think of anything crazier to do than people can think of themselves. So it has to be rooted in something. It has to be in the pursuit of something.

C/D: How does Crash Course, which premieres this spring, relate to that Top Gear sense of authenticity?

RH: Oh, come on. It’s about big machines; machines that have a job to do. I love vehicles with a purpose. That’s why I prefer Porsches to Ferraris. I like things that have a job to do and do it, foremost. Which would you rather have? Do you want to talk about it in the bar, or do you want to drive it? I’ve just sold a Lamborghini that I loved, but thankfully I’ve kept my 911.

C/D: So will you keep your  997 Carrera S, or will you get the new 991?

RH: I haven’t driven it. And the drive is everything with that car. I simply don’t care about anything until I’ve driven it. If there’s that dynamic transfer of weight toward the back when you give it a boot full, and it goes fractionally light on the front wheels; if I can sit in the passenger’s seat blindfolded and be driven and know it’s a 911, then, yeah, I’ll probably change. If not, I’ve decided I’m going to wear mine out. I reckon that in one lifetime, you’ve only got time to take one 911 from new to the grave.

C/D: Is there anything you’d have done differently?

RH: It would be good to not work with a six-foot-five host who just hits me all the time for being short. But, no. Because if  you change one thing, you change a whole load of other things.

www.caranddriver.com/features/what-id-do-differently-richard-hammond-feature

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond: I Love to Hang Out with My Bikes

Richard Hammond, 44, TV presenter on Top Gear, tells us about his perfect weekend


Hanging out: Richard Hammond likes to tinker with his many motorcycles                Photo: David Rose

By Olivia Parker
7:00AM GMT 28 Nov 2014

A perfect weekend has to be ordained in the stars because it’s so rare that everyone in my family is available, but I’ll try and imagine one. On the Friday night I’d come home to rural Herefordshire from wherever I’d been filming. I am very lucky to travel the amount that I do but the best journey is always the one home to my front door. I wish I could say we’d have some exotic home-cooked meal but we wouldn’t, we’d order a Chinese takeaway and eat it in the front room.

I’m an early riser by choice and whenever work makes me get up at 5am, I love it. However, none of the three women with whom I share my house – my wife, Mindy, and my daughters Izzy, 14, and Willow, 11 – like it at all. So first thing I’d take my dog Bleaberry, a little border collie pup named after Bleaberry Tarn in the Lake District, and run her around the hill opposite our house.

Afterwards I’d wake up the girls. Best to be armed with a long stick or a klaxon at this point – it’s very dangerous. Then, during a perfect weekend, Izzy and I would get on my motorbike and head off for Buttermere, in the Lake District. Our crash helmets are Bluetoothed together so she chats away, and along the route we like to stop at some of those really cheesy tea rooms you get at castles. We swagger in all tough in our bike kit, swearing under our breath, and then order a cup of tea, a hot chocolate and two cream cakes.

Meanwhile, in an ideal world, Mindy and Willow, who are the horse nuts in our family, would pile their ponies into a knackered old horse lorry (it would be miraculously clean too, not the foul-smelling stinking ruin it currently is) and drive up behind us. We’d all convene at Buttermere, which is my favourite place in the world without exception. Then Mindy and Willow would set off on a hack around the lake and Izzy and I would follow.

There’s a beautiful walk where you go up the shoulders of Red Pike, High Stile, drop down a little bit so you can see into Ennerdale and then up Haystacks, where Alfred Wainwright’s ashes were scattered. It would be a bit windy and rainy and the girls might moan, but actually they’d love it. Or just hate me. Of course, we’d have to stop for lunch on the walk too: by tradition I always have a tin of tuna, which I eat with a fork, some of that horrible Peperami, a little block of Kendal mint cake and a bottle of water. That’s glamorous, that is.

Later, we’d meet up with some of the other families we know and sit in the bar of the Bridge Hotel – a tremendous place – playing cards, drinking too much and eating ourselves almost unconscious while the kids loon around in the campsite. Of course, we’d all brag and lie about where we’d walked that day too, as is tradition in the Lake District.

Then we’d all set off back home the following day. I don’t have a set routine on a Sunday because it’s entirely possible I’ll be working, and it’s no good if I wake up at 5am in the middle of the jungle on a Top Gear Special and my whole body is crying out for a roast and the Sunday papers. Instead, a Sunday at home involves the same sort of thing as a Saturday in the Lake District – we live in the countryside very deliberately. It’s not exactly convenient when you work in television because I spend my life getting to and from London, but the payoff is that I can wake up on a Sunday morning here and pile away round the hills. Once I’m home, it takes a lot to prise me away. So it doesn’t matter what the party is in London, I’m not interested.

We do usually manage Sunday lunch, nine times out of 10, and I’m a bit blokey about that. None of the girls are particularly interested as they’re probably so busy with their schedules – Izzy and Willow both play hockey very keenly so inevitably many weekends are spent acting as taxi drivers. We’re very keen to support the girls in all their interests so even though we don’t know anything about hockey, we go and stand on the sidelines and cheer loudly, as is our job.

Our house is pretty hectic. As well as Bleaberry we have six other dogs, six cats, an unknown number of horses (my wife hides them from me), a donkey called Rosie whom I adore, a handful of sheep, a peacock, a million ducks and chickens of assorted varieties and a pond stocked with carp. Willow and I got fishing rods for Christmas last year so once we’ve cleared the weed off the pond, we’re planning to float my little plastic boat out and have a go at catching them.

The house itself is littered with hockey sticks, bags, hairbands and brushes, as is our car. I bought a nice Land Rover Discovery thinking it would be our posh family car and we’d keep it clean and tidy, but it’s disgusting. I tend to run around in a Porsche and I’ve got lots of other cars, dating back to 1933. That’s my hobby and nobody else in the household is especially interested except Izzy, who will occasionally humour Daddy by coming out for a spin in one of the vintage models.

I also have my bikes in a barn and on a Sunday I’ll probably spend some time hanging out with them. I’m not saying I’m chatting to them, but I’m not entirely silent. I’m rebuilding an old Honda SS 50 for my eldest at the moment, so I’ll go and work on that, get stuck, realise it’s too complicated, get angry, give up and drink a beer. A few of my mates and I formed the Bollitree Gentleman’s Welding Society a few years ago, so they might come round and we’ll do a bit of welding.

On Sunday evenings, what I do depends on whether Top Gear’s on or not. If I’m not working, I’ll be sitting about making sure everything is ready for school on Monday. I suffer guilt when I go away because I miss my girls and I know they’re not going to be young for long. One day I’d like to do some projects farther afield, but I’m going to wait until they’ve grown up a bit. Then I’ll be glad to see the back of them, and they’ll be thrilled to see the back of me.

Herbal tea or stiff drink?

I love both but I’m more likely to go for a stiff drink. I do like a gin and tonic.

Favourite joke?

A Swedish guy goes into a chemist and says, “Hello, I’d like to buy a new deodorant please.” The assistant says, “Certainly sir, ball or aerosol?” And he replies, “Neither, it’s for my armpits.”

All time favourite Top Gear trip?

We’d all say the Botswana trip. It was the first time the programme spread its wings and it was astonishing. I saw the baobab trees that have stalked my imagination since I was a child, and it was like putting my hand on the flank of a dinosaur.

Plan B career?

I’d like to have been an architect. I’d be a profoundly wonderful one, obviously.

Worst habit?

A tendency towards introspection. I can also be pretty pedantic. I get stuck on a theme: I think its because I’m so pleased I’ve made my point that I’ll make it again and again.

Five favourite things ?

My family

Running over the hill opposite where I live

My dog

My motorbike

Sneezing

Wild Weather with Richard Hammond starts at 9pm on Monday on BBC One


www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-gear/11255942/Richard-Hammond-I-love-to-hang-out-with-my-bikes.html

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond: My Life In Bikes

Published: 08 December 2014

Richard Hammond is one third of the Top Gear presenting team, a life-long bike nut, and keeper of an ever-changing stable of motorcycles from the oddball to the iconic




How did you get into bikes and what were your first years of riding like?

My first bike was a Honda MTX50, which I bought half-and-half with my parents for my 16th birthday. It was fairly beaten about, but it looked bigger than a 50cc bike, it had no sidestand on it so I had to lean it against stuff all the time, too. But, despite everything, I loved that bike so much. It represented everything I had been waiting for in getting onto a motorcycle for the first time. I had a series of other small bikes after that including a Honda XL100, which I just crashed all the time, and then a Kawasaki GP100 – which was written off when I got smashed into by a Mini Metro. Beyond a helmet, my specialist bike kit totalled a leather jacket I bought off a mate for £5, and a set of ‘off-road’ boots that were basically rubbish, but the best I could afford.

That was the early years of riding, what came later?

I had to take a break for a couple of years after the GP100 because I just had no money and I was working all the time. After a couple of years I bought a Honda NSR125R, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I carried a picture of that bike around with me for a month before I bought it. Then some cyclist crashed into the back of me and damaged it. I was furious. My first big bike was a Honda CBX750F. I just couldn’t believe the noise it made. I used it for work all the time and used to ride around with this huge UHER reel-to-reel tape recorder for the radio station I was working for at the time. I was riding to a job once with some motocrossers, and they were at the far end of a field, so I thought I would show them I was one of the brethren, and rode across the grassy field. On a Honda CBX750F. I crashed, massively. They had to help get the bike off me, once they stopped laughing.

Any others along the way?

Loads really. I had a Kawasaki ZZR600, the one with the dodgy rear shock that collapsed. But I loved that bike. I had a Suzuki GSX-R750WP when I was about 24, and that was awesome. I toured all over on that, all around the UK and down to France too. I woke up one day and realised I had absolutely no money, even for food, I was living in a shared house I couldn’t make ends meet so I rode to Accrington and sold the bike to the dealer who gave me the most money. I walked home sobbing; just as well it was pissing down as I had tears running down my face. After a bit of a break I bought a Honda CBR1000F; a big flying fridge for £1000. I bought it as a winter bike, but when I turned up to collect it I realised it was mint. I rode that everywhere and absolutely loved it.

What’s in the garage at the moment?

Quite a few right now. A 1927 Sunbeam Model 2, 1950 BMW R51 RS replica, 1959 Norton Dominator racer, new Norton Commando 961 SE, 1976 Honda Gold Wing, 1974 Kawasaki Z900, 1976 Yamaha FS-1E, Honda SS50, Kawasaki ZXR750H1, Suzuki GSX-R1100, Kawasaki KR1-S, Moto Guzzi Le Mans Mk1, Bimota YB9, Ducati 916 SPS Foggy rep, two BMW K1s, a Suzuki GS1000, BMW K100RS, R100RT, R90S, and my daily ride which is an R1200RT. I also have a Brough Superior SS100 being restored, and an SS80 period race replica on the way. Oh, and a Suzuki TL125 trials bike. I use all of them as much as I can. I don’t like to think of myself as a collector. I just love riding motorcycles; not on track but just to ride. I love it.

Are there others you would love to own?

Oh yes, of course! If I find a tenner down the back of the sofa I automatically think I can put that towards another bike. I would love a Vincent Black Shadow, a Honda CBX1000, Kawasaki GPZ900, Kawasaki GPZ1000RX, original 1992 Honda Fireblade and a Honda RC30. It’s never-ending.


www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2014/december/my-life-in-bikes-richard-hammond/

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond: Top Gear? ‘It’s a show. I’ve made other shows that have come and gone’


Richard Hammond Joseph Sinclair / BBC      
                                                                 

Richard Hammond, right, with fellow former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May Gallo Images / Getty Images


Hammond swaps roads for the great river in his other new Amazon series

Andrew Billen
Published at 12:01AM, September 8 2015

The daredevil former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, the little one who nearly killed himself on the show’s behalf nine years ago, is this afternoon brimming with the spirit of the Amazon. Which Amazon is another matter. I shall leave it to you to judge whether Hammond has imbibed the pantheistic vibes of the South American river from which he has returned after filming a Sky documentary series or whether he has swallowed whole the ethos of the North American internet department store and television provider to which he is now headed — Amazon.com Inc being one of the most secretive and controlling commercial organisations on earth.

We are to meet at Freuds Communications’ hubristic new HQ in central London at noon but Hammond arrives a little late having mislaid his way from his last meeting. He has this morning motorcycled from his family home in Ross-on-Wye, but Fitzrovia has defeated him. He remains, he explains, a “country bumpkin”, although in his still-disturbing goatee, blue jeans, nattily embellished shirt and blue blazer, he does not look like one. The meetings were “work stuff”, “personal stuff”.

“It is one of those times, isn’t it?” says the 45-year-old who, through force majeure (ie, Jeremy Clarkson’s temper) this summer left his lucrative job on the BBC’s Top Gear and landed a very much more lucrative one at Amazon Prime. His Sky two-parter in the Amazon rain forest, Richard Hammond’s Jungle Quest, is a quite separate matter and allows us to see out of oily context the presenter who for 13 years played Jeremy Clarkson’s braver yet mockable little brother.

“It’s a coincidence, the two Amazons in my life. It’s exciting, very exciting,” he says. Have they started planning the new car show? “Yes. There’s a lot to be done because we will reinvent, do new stuff, and that’s as invigorating as it gets. So what a fantastic challenge.”

The Jungle Quest commission in fact came before the BBC decided not to renew Clarkson’s contract after he punched a location producer for failing to magic up a cooked dinner for him. It is beautifully shot; “immersive” in Hammond’s phrase. There is close to nostalgic pleasure in seeing him with nothing weightier on his mind than the fear of coming back with insufficient snaps for an exhibition. He is revealed, as if the traits needed revealing, as competitive and fearful of losing face. He declares he “might just cry” after securing a shot of a three-toed sloth halfway up a tree, although I notice he doesn’t.

“I don’t want to sound like an old hippy, but a rainforest ringing with laughter” — the fauna’s, presumably, not his crew’s — “was just beautiful, really, really special.” Under my scrutiny, he explains it is perfectly possible psychologically to be both a petrol head and a child of nature. “They are both expressions of something human. There is something primal about the ability to move yourself efficiently across ground.”

So he can race cars, whose emissions contribute to climate change, and work with WWF, partners in Sky’s Rainforest Rescue campaign? “Yes, that’s an elephant in that particular room but they’re not mutually exclusive, my two passions, I don’t think, in any way. They’re fundamentally intertwined.” Does he accept that carbon fuels contribute to global warming? “It is among the very many other human activities that we participate in. It sounds that it does.”

And his and Clarkson’s Top Gear made fun of what Al Gore called an “inconvenient truth”? “Top Gear made fun of every stance possible, including itself. I mean, any programme that had three grown men standing next to a street sign that says ‘Bra’ and giggling at it is clearly taking the mickey out of what it is to be a middle-aged man.”

Do Clarkson and James May, Top Gear’s third wheel, make fun of him for going green? “No. Jeremy won’t mind me saying it, [but] actually he’s fanatically interested in birds and we regularly had to stop a whole convoy of vehicles because he’s seen a condor or something.”

Jungle Quest makes much of Hammond’s childhood “obsession” with nature. He tells me he would spend “every minute” with a magnifying glass and tweezers exploring the fields over the garden fence in the West Midlands suburb where he grew up, the son of a legal executive and his wife, a charity worker. Oddly, neither of his memoirs, On the Edge or On the Road: Growing Up in Eight Journeys — My Early Years, mentions this obsession. He says he was anxious to skip ahead to his broadcasting career.

This began stutteringly in a succession of BBC local radio stations, but it was while he was working for Granada’s Men & Motors in 2002 that he auditioned for Top Gear. It was in the process of being refashioned into a testosterone-laden parody of a car programme. Although he has worked elsewhere in the 13 years since, it was here that Hammond made his name and gained, courtesy of his co-presenters, a new one, “the Hamster”. Occasionally, he would obligingly nibble on cardboard for them. And then Clarkson lost it, in Yorkshire, over the cold-meat platter and effectively it was all over.

Where was he when he heard? “Listen, I’m so reluctant to go there. Let’s move on. Every single party involved learnt, and I’m not going to rattle anybody’s chains.” I am not asking him to. “I can’t give you a sort of, ‘I was here when I heard’. We’ve now reached a point where all parties can move on.”

In the spirit of quid pro quo, though, what did he think? What did he say to Jeremy? “Again, I can’t go down that road. We’ve had many conversations. This year we’ve probably spent more time all of us together than ever we have.” Has it brought them closer? “I suppose so. And that’s good. So we’re on the best footing we’ve ever been to go ahead now and do what we do best.” Was he worried for Jeremy? “I don’t want to get drawn on that.”

“Can you move on from that?” asks the chap from WWF who is in the room with us to help with “details about the Amazon”. I say I don’t think I shall. Hammond seems worried or ashamed about showing any vulnerability about what happened back in March. “I feel vulnerable when I am facing a tarantula or something. You reach a point in your working life when you genuinely, without sounding like a businessman, think: ‘Oh, there are opportunities.’ ”

It seems a very macho gloss to me. “Only because you’re asking me to respond on an issue that involves a lot of other people, a lot of other parties and I don’t want to say anything that is misinterpreted by anyone around us.” I am asking if there was a process before he reached this point of equanimity. “Of course there was. I’m not an idiot. Of course there was.”

Had he felt towards the end that the BBC had ceased to “get” Top Gear? “I can’t be drawn on that, honestly. I’m reluctant, genuinely. I’ve worked for the BBC for 28 years, on and off, and I don’t want to get in the way. The BBC will do what it’s going to do. We’ll do what we’re going to do.”

It sounded to me as if the relationship with the BBC Two controller, Kim Shillinglaw, had become tense. “Any broadcaster/programme relationship is complicated and difficult. We look forward to forging a new one with where our new show is going.”

Will Amazon feel more like a publisher than a boss? “Yes. They’re not going to interfere. They want us doing what we do.” Liberating? “Yeah, very.”

This reticent corporate talk is so disappointing from a Top Gear loudmouth that I really wonder what is going on. Is he afraid of Clarkson? Has he been told by Amazon to repeat after it, “the best is yet to be”? Or is he moved only by three-toed sloths?

Even when I ask if recording that final Top Gear was emotional, he ducks. “It’s a show. I’ve made other shows that have come and gone: Total Wipeout, Brainiac.” Eventually, grudgingly, he admits he cannot deny that it was emotional and segues into a strange tribute to the team on the equally defunct Blast Lab. This begets a lecture on how it is the job of “communicators” simply to show things: “That’s why we’re called presenters.”

He says: “I suppose there is a power available, but certainly in my case I don’t seek to use it. I don’t want to influence. I just want to show. That’s all I wanted to do with the show that I made with Sky, Rainforest Rescue and WWF.” It all sounds very saintly from a man who once compared Mexican cars to their “lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight” owners. “We’ve all made jokes that people haven’t got or thought weren’t funny.”

The move from the BBC to Amazon is no joke, however, and it will be examined. So much money depends on it. Indeed a senior suit at Amazon’s streaming rival Netflix has just said it passed on the Top Gear team because “they were not worth it”. Hammond knows how much depends on the programme. “And we will work our arses off to make it really good.”

What is certain is that the trio have profited from the crisis. Some reports claim he will earn £7.2 million a year at Amazon, or £600,000 an episode. “I’m at peace,” he says when I ask him if the sums embarrass him. The press speculation is “coffee-machine chat”.

Has being wealthy changed him? He mentioned reaching the age of security earlier. “I wasn’t talking financially, was I? I was talking about a career to which I’ve dedicated my entire working life. It’s very important that my two daughters get to see me apply myself at work and continue going.”

I doubt, actually, if money has changed him or if it will. In On the Edge, he writes that as a child, being small meant he could not “impose” himself on others physically, so he did so by being funny. If that failed, hitting himself on the face with a bicycle pump “went down a storm every time”. For a dozen years on Top Gear he did just that: told jokes and placed himself in jeopardy. The brain-crushing crash that put him in a coma for two weeks changed nothing.

“It sounds trite to say, but I’ve filed it away with all the other major experiences in my life. It had an impact. It altered who I was, but so did having two daughters and marrying my wife.” Most people, if they had nearly died having volunteered to drive a car at 200 miles an hour, would have decided it changed everything. “Three hundred and twenty,” he says. “That had an effect? Yes, of course it had. I spent a long time looking out of hospital windows through the rain, contemplating my own mind and place and therefore personality.”

Yet he went right back? “Yeah, I did, but you know, risks were considered. Going to the North Pole [for TG in 2007] was an odd one because my doctors couldn’t really give any advice because they don’t know what happens [to someone with brain injuries], but it’s all part of the tapestry of my particular life.”

And so now his career threads on to something very similar. From Amazon to Amazon, however, we can at least agree that Hammond’s life is, nevertheless, and in both senses, an insanely rich tapestry.

Richard Hammond’s Jungle Quest is on Sky 1 HD at 9pm on Sep 16 and 23


www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/tv-radio/article4550090.ece

[thestig]

Sounds like that interviewer was being a bit of an arse.

[RedMoon11]

Former Top Gear host Richard Hammond discusses his TV return

By Craig_Jones | Posted: September 11, 2015


Richard Hammond filming Jungle Quest
 

Ex-Top Gear host Richard Hammond is back on screens with two-part documentary Jungle Quest. But which was wilder - the Amazon or working with Jeremy Clarkson? Jeananne Craig finds out.

As an eight-year-old boy, former Top Gear host Richard Hammond received a book which was to spark a "lifetime obsession" - but not with cars, with nature.

The West Midlands-born petrolhead was gifted a children's Encyclopaedia Of Animals, fuelling a passion for wildlife and photography and, more recently, inspiring his latest documentary, Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest.

The Sky 1 show sees the presenter trek through the Amazon rainforest in the hope of spotting and snapping some of the creatures he read about as a youngster, from the three-toed sloth to the pink river dolphin.

It's been an eventful year for Hammond, whose time on Top Gear came to an end after co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson was sacked in March for reportedly punching a producer (though the pair, along with James May, have since signed a big-money deal to front a motoring series for Amazon Prime).

So did dealing with wild animals have any similarities with working with Clarkson?

"In many ways, yes," says Hammond, laughing. "You never quite know what to expect."

Indeed, as the star, known to fans as 'The Hamster', made his way through the depths of the jungle and the mighty Amazon River, he soon learnt that the reality was quite different from his childhood dreams.

"Physically, I'm used to travelling to some fairly wild places, I've done that in various contexts over the years through work. But it was a particularly challenging environment," says the 45-year-old, fresh from a motorcycle ride near his Herefordshire home.

"Also, technically, to take photographs in it, because it's very demanding visually and physically on the cameras, and then the pressure of having to produce images."

There was added stress for Hammond because his Jungle Quest images were going on display - at the school in Herefordshire that his daughters Izzy and Willow attend, along with another one in the family's nearest village and at the junior school Hammond attended in Solihull.

"I've spent 27 years as a radio and TV presenter, most of which time is spent compensating for your own inadequacies by talking a lot, but these were going to be standalone still images that people would judge, without me next to them to make excuses for them. So I was quite nervous," he confesses.

Hammond's work has taken him all over the world, and he says he misses Izzy and Willow and his wife Mindy "dreadfully" when he's away.

"If I have a quiet moment, I daren't look at my telephone because it's full of pictures of them and it'll make me sad," adds the presenter, who has also hosted documentary series Planet Earth Live, children's science show Blast Lab and adventure game show, Total Wipeout.

"We all love each other very much, we're very close as a family, and my going away reminds us of that closeness," he continues. "Let's not forget my primary duty is as a father and a husband, so when I go away, I accrue experience and stories and I bring that back and share it with them and that's great."

Now the presenter - who sustained a serious brain injury in 2006, when the jet-powered dragster he was driving for Top Gear crashed on a airfield in Yorkshire - is keen to go from one Amazon to another and reunite with his old pals.

"I'm just very, very pleased now that things are settled," Hammond says of the furore over Clarkson's sacking.

The new show - which Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos has described as "very, very, very expensive" - will be "new, better, bigger, bolder", according to its host.

"We're constantly talking about it and planning for it. It's given us exactly the charge we needed to revitalise and reinvigorate. Creatively, it couldn't be any better; we're going to be left to make it," Hammond adds.

"It will be our show, it will be beautifully made and we're going to throw everything we can think of at it, and that process is the most exhilarating thing imaginable."

He's also excited to be part of the "new world of television", creating a project for a streaming service, rather than a traditional broadcaster.

"It's a television show in a world where television is undergoing a tremendous sea change; it's probably never been more exciting than this, and the same with the car industry. The car itself is undergoing an enormous sequence of changes. There's never been a better time to look at it, talk about it and consider it."

When asked how he thinks newly signed Top Gear host Chris Evans will fare, the enthusiastic presenter is diplomatic, but less effusive than usual. "We'll see, won't we? I'm sure he'll make a great job of it."

As for who should join Evans on the hosting panel, Hammond replies: "I don't know, that's for him to decide. He's got to make his own show."

And will he still be tuning in? "Ha ha!" he responds, laughing. "We shall see..."

Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest begins on Sky 1 on Wednesday, September 16


www.bristolpost.co.uk/Gear-host-Richard-Hammond-discusses-TV-return/story-27779012-detail/story.html

[RedMoon11]

Hammond: 'Of Course' I'll Still Watch Top Gear

The presenter opens up about leaving Top Gear, telling Sky News: "It had been around before us and it'll be around after us."

Video: Former Top Gear Host On New Show

Richard Hammond has told Sky News how he will watch the new presenters of Top Gear with interest - but is "invigorated" about moving on to his new motoring show.

Hammond, along with James May, departed the show after fellow presenter Jeremy Clarkson was dropped for punching a producer earlier this year.

Since then, Chris Evans has been announced as the show's next host and Hammond, May and Clarkson have signed a multimillion-pound deal to do a new show with Amazon.

Speaking on Sky News' Sunrise programme, Hammond said he was not scared by what was ahead.

"No, I'm excited," he said.

"We'll be back on air, it'll be a while...we've got a lot to do to evolve a whole new thing, which is a tremendously exciting and invigorating process."

When asked if he would watch new host Chris Evans' progress with Top Gear, he replied: "Of course. We were guardians of the whole thing.

"It had been around before us and it'll be around after us."

He wouldn't be pushed on a title for the trio's new show, saying no title had been decided on and adding: "I wouldn't tell you if I had."

Hammond was on Sky News speaking about his involvement in a new documentary, Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest, to be shown on Sky 1 as part of Sky's Rainforest Rescue partnership with the WWF.

The show saw Hammond filming in the rainforest, an environment that he described as "dazzling" - but he admitted that May and Clarkson may not have enjoyed it so much.

He said: "I can see them now running around in loin clothes , smeared in mud and insects."

:: Watch Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest: 16 and 23 September at 9pm on Sky 1

news.sky.com/story/1552137/hammond-of-course-ill-still-watch-top-gear

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond: 'My jungle show is very different to Top Gear!' (VIDEO)

Former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond is heading to the rainforest to fulfil a lifelong dream and photograph some of the planet's most amazing creatures in Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest.

In this two-part series for Sky 1, Richard will trek through steamy impenetrable jungle, tackle the mighty River Amazon, sleep rough under the forest canopy and be hoisted hundreds of feet to the top of trees, in a bid to get the perfect wildlife shot.

We spoke to him about a breathtaking encounter he had with a sloth, dolphins that live in the forest, creating his own nature club as a young boy and how his friends Jeremy Clarkson and James May would have coped in the Amazon!

Richard Hammond's Jungle Quest begins on Sky 1 on Wednesday, September 16 at 9pm. Watch the interview with Richard at link below

Read more at www.whatsontv.co.uk/tv-news/news/richard-hammond-my-jungle-show-is-very-different-to-top-gear-video#8bBM2KmyC9sAT1XL.99
 

[RedMoon11]

Richard Hammond: I really thought I was going to die

It’s six months since his car came off the road at 120mph and burst into flames during the filming of The Grand Tour. Now Richard Hammond is haunted by the knowledge that his daughters might have grown up without him.

By Nigel Farndale
December 2 2017


Richard Hammond, 47, at his home near Ross-on-Wye last month
TOM JACKSON

You would imagine that “having an excessive fondness for your wife” is a condition so obscure it would not have a name, yet it does. Uxoriousness. I mention it because I don’t think I’ve ever met a man quite as uxorious as Richard Hammond.

His wife is called Mindy and he refers to her often as we sit in the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes on the two-hour drive from Heathrow to what he calls his “stupid pretend castle” in Herefordshire. And later, when we get there, I find myself walking in on them when he is greeting her with a big hug in their low and oak-beamed kitchen, even though he has only been away for one night. He calls her Mindy Moo.

She is 52, has long blonde hair, is 5ft 2in tall and is wearing wellies, having just come in from doing the horses, or perhaps the sheep – something rustic, anyway. He is five years younger, five inches taller, is still going through a leather jacket phase and has a David Brent-style goatee he claims is not dyed. They have been married since 2002 – the year Hammond joined Top Gear – but were going out together for seven years before that. She is, then, long-suffering in the sense of being married to someone who keeps having crashes that ought, by the laws of physics and probability, to be fatal.

The first was in 2006 when his jet-powered dragster left an airstrip at 300mph and he was in a coma for two weeks. The second happened in June this year and will feature in the new series of The Grand Tour, which is released on Amazon’s streaming service this Friday.

He was doing a timed hill climb in Switzerland in a £2 million electric supercar when it came off on a corner at 120mph and rolled several hundred feet back down, an experience he compares to being inside a tumble dryer full of bricks. He remained conscious but thought he was going to die, and then he realised the car was about to burst into flames and managed to scramble out seconds before it did.

As we are driving to his house he makes light of all this, in that “It was only a scratch” way men do when there are other men around. With a tap of his right knee, he says, “Got a metal plate in here. Ten pins holding the tibia and the plateau together and, because it is a weight-bearing part of the knee, that will need replacing. The main downside is I’ve been told I can’t run for a year and, when I do, my knee will go.”

He thinks the ordeal was worse for the director, Phil Churchward. “I thought we had wrapped for the day, and then Phil asked me for one more take and I said, ‘You do realise,if you make me do this again, I’m boundto crash?’ ” says Hammond. “A minute later, the car was upside down at the bottom of a mountain and on fire. Poor Phil was in pieces. He came to see me in hospital that night and was a broken man.”


Hammond at home

It might have been bad for his director, but I’m guessing Mindy didn’t exactly shrug off the accident either. Did she give him an ultimatum? “The only ultimatum I have had from her was when she said, ‘You’ve had your two strikes. I don’t want a third.’ ” He looks at me with large, unblinking brown eyes and deploys an expensive white smile. “Will it change me? Probably, yes. I will think, um, things can go wrong. This is a wake-up call for Mindy and me because it is a reminder of how lucky we are and how we don’t want to throw it all away. I need to reassess my view of risk slightly.”

Yet they had a similar talk in 2006 by a fireside in Scotland. “Recovering from a brain injury like that is difficult,” he says. “It’s about mood control and I was going through a phase of obsession, paranoia and compulsion, and I knew I could make myself a victim if I wasn’t careful. But Mindy and I said, ‘Let’s turn this into a good thing in our lives. Let’s take stock and appreciate what we have.’ ”

For all his blasé manner, Hammond admits that following the latest crash he is haunted by the thought that he might have left not only his wife as a widow, but his two teenage daughters without a father. “But I don’t feel like I am reckless,” he adds, “because I’m not. I learnt to fly helicopters and I was bloody cautious. Same with motorcycles, which I have ridden for 32 years. Occasionally, if you do enough of stuff, things will go wrong.”

I ask if it has made him superstitious, but apparently, it hasn’t. “The only superstition I have is that I always have a pee before I do something dangerous, because you don’t want a full bladder if you’re going to have an accident,” he says. “It can rupture and kill you. Plus, you look a bit of a nelly if they pull you out of the car and you’ve wet yourself.”

In their mocking, blokeish way, his co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May have said that the crash happened because Hammond was too short to see over the steering wheel and that the surgery to his knee has left him “even shorter”, which is true, but only by 7mm. But even Clarkson seems to have been rattled by this latest crash, admitting it is the worst he has ever witnessed.

Instead of hill running, which Hammond found therapeutic after his 2006 crash, he has taken up cycling to stay fit. That must be awkward, I say, given that Top Gear was always having a go at cyclists. “Well, yes, but only because cyclists are so stroppy,” he says. “Where did all the fury come from? I’m going to be a chilled cyclist.”

If “cyclists” became Top Gear shorthand for the PC brigade (as Hammond calls them) that they liked to wind up, then for the PC brigade, Top Gear became shorthand for bigotry. Hammond was one of the worst offenders when he described Mexicans as being, among other things, “lazy, feckless and flatulent”.

He now tells me this was a consequence of him playing a “sort of character” on the show. “That was really us taking the piss out of ourselves,” he says. “I was portraying a cartoon version of myself, the thick Brummie. The picture I painted of Mexicans belonged in a Road Runner cartoon. The laugh was on me because anyone watching would say, ‘He’s an idiot if he believes that.’ ”

With a sighing outbreath, he gives a shake of his head. “Look, it’s a difficult thing to carry off and sometimes it doesn’t work. I felt queasy about that one afterwards.”

While he accepts that with the “Clarkson, Hammond and May banter” there comes a degree of deliberate provocation and line-crossing to annoy people, he doesn’t always enjoy doing it. “The other two laugh at me for it, but I don’t enjoy being in trouble, I genuinely don’t,” he says. “We were in a ferry terminal once and they said, ‘Let’s jump the queue,’ and I said, ‘Actually, let’s not.’ ”

Clarkson did enjoy getting into trouble, however, and with each new transgression – such as his use of the word “slope”, which is a pejorative term for an Asian – there was an attempt at the BBC to get rid of him. The opportunity was eventually handed to his enemies on a plate of cold food when he punched an assistant producer.

Hammond is all too aware of the incongruity: that a BBC presenter who was hugely popular with the public – one million people signed a petition to have Clarkson reinstated on the show – was pretty much loathed by the bien pensants who actually run the BBC. “Yeah, yeah, I can see that the BBC is very good at twisting itself into knots like that,” he says. “The BBC needs to remember sometimes that it can’t be one view only. It can’t be homogenised. It has a duty to reflect the nation.”


With wife Mindy and daughters Willow and Isabella, July 2017

The three amigos went to Amazon with a budget said to be not unadjacent to £160 million, but then, in the first series, came another comment that caused offence, this time to gay people, and this time from the mouth of Hammond. He said he didn’t eat ice cream and that this was “something to do with being straight”. It caused a Twitter storm.

Didn’t the complainants have a point? Don’t mocking comments like that from public figures belittle gay people and make it harder for them to come out? “It was certainly not what I set out to do,” he says carefully. “I wouldn’t want to cause genuine difficulty for anyone. But if it’s mock fury, pantomime fury, from people looking to take offence, then …” He trails off. “Look, anyone who knows me knows I wasn’t being serious, that I’m not homophobic. Love is love, whatever the sex of the two people in love. It may be because I live in a hideously safe and contained middle-class world, where a person’s sexuality is not an issue, but when I hear of people in the media coming out, I think, why do they even feel the need to mention it? It is so old-fashioned to make a big deal of it. That isn’t even an interesting thing to say at a dinner party any more.”

So he was making the comment in a spirit of the ironic, post-prejudice, testing-the-boundaries way that, say, Ricky Gervais might do it? “I don’t think I can claim it was as carefully crafted as that,” he says. “I’m not a comic, and when I try to be funny it bites me on the arse.”

I get the impression that, while Clarkson revels in being a hate figure to the liberal left, Hammond has no stomach for it. I mention another left-wing comedian, Stewart Lee, who based a whole section of one of his live shows on Hammond. It was not only funny, it was brutal. Lee characterised Hammond as a giggling, cowardly sidekick to the bullying Clarkson. Among the more printable comments was a description of Hammond as “a publicly funded cheerleader for mass ignorance”.

I ask if he finds such characterisations hurtful. “I don’t think Stewart Lee likes me very much,” he says with a grimace. “But if noise-makers are just making noise, I’m not interested. I don’t live in north London; I live in the countryside. I don’t join in with that. I don’t have an agenda. Feelings? Not in the sense of getting hurt, because my friends and family know me, and they know I can be an absolute idiot, as thick as a brick, but they also know I’m not necessarily the same as that public persona.”

It is a disarmingly dignified answer. In person, Hammond comes across as chatty and cheerful, if a little prone to Alan Partridge-like self-aggrandisement. And while his self-deprecation may be a useful conceit – always mentioning his diminutive stature first, as well as his reputation for not being very bright – I do wonder what lies behind his insecurities.

He grew up in suburban Solihull, the eldest of three boys, one of whom became a teacher, the other a fund manager. Their father was a probate solicitor, their mother a charity consultant, and the family moved to Yorkshire when he was 15. But then, or so I have read, he was expelled from Ripon Grammar School. Is that true? “A bit,” he says. “I joined in the sixth form and didn’t bed in well, and after six months it was suggested that I might like to try somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

After that, he went to study audio-visual communication at Harrogate College of Art and Technology. “But I do wish I’d been to university,” he says. “I did get a place to study architecture as a mature student at Canterbury, but by then I was working in local radio and in debt so I couldn’t afford it. It was going to be seven years before I got to design a garage extension. I sometimes wonder where that other path might have led. It certainly wouldn’t have led me to Mindy’s doorstep, so I can’t regret it.”

They met at Renault, where he was working as an assistant press officer and she was in HR. “So it was very much an old-school office romance,” he says.

Nowadays, that would be a political minefield, I note. How did he manage it back then? “Well, I’m not very bold,” he says. “I fancied her tremendously. Everyone did. She was drawn like a cartoon of a ridiculously pretty girl. I got an invitation to the Doghouse Ball and I was scared to ask her, so I asked the boss’s chauffeur to ask her for me. She said yes and when I went to pick her up from her flat, her Irish friend Maggie answered the door and said over her shoulder to Mindy, ‘Sure, he’s never five-seven. He’s a diddy fecker.’ At the ball, there were cigarettes on the table and we smoked and drank and talked about blues music.”


The supercar crash that Hammond survived in Switzerland in June

A week after the ball, they met up to walk their dogs. “It was a lovely day and I turned around to see her catching up and I just thought, oh, there you go. That was it. I’d fallen in love. When you know, you know. Soulmate is a soppy word. It’s more the intertwining of your life with someone who makes it nicer. Mindy still surprises me.”

And they have been through much together. Mindy was, after all, in his life before Top Gear turned into a global monster with 350 million viewers worldwide. What was the mood like at home when it became apparent that Clarkson was going to be sacked? “It wasn’t a high point,” says Hammond. “There was a sense of ‘So, that’s that, then.’ James came over and we went out with Izzy, our older daughter, for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and James said, ‘I’ll pay,’ and I said, ‘No, I’ll pay,’ and Izzy said, ‘I should pay because neither of you has a job.’ ”

He thinks it was good for his daughters to hear their parents having one of those “What are we going to do now?” conversations. “I did think it could mean us having to move out and me having to go back to local radio,” he says. “We shared everything with the girls. They knew the amount of time we had before the money would run out.” Quite a long time, one imagines, given that Hammond is estimated to be worth £20 million, although he tells me he is not sure of “the numbers” himself.

It is a measure of his niceness that he resists the urge to rubbish his old show, which has struggled. Hammond says he likes it and that he thinks it will find its mark. “There is room in the world for more than one car show,” he says. “Look how many cookery shows there are.”

He thinks the secret of the success of Top Gear in his day and The Grand Tour now is “naughtiness”. He describes the formula as three middle-aged men driving about getting things wrong and sometimes catching fire and falling over. That and it being a family show. “With Top Gear, we were given the Sunday-night slot. It was a 50/50 male and female audience. With The Grand Tour, we have continued some of that sense of it being a family show, the trying not to swear.”

There have been one or two teething problems, but The Grand Tour seems to have lived up to expectations.

And the chemistry between the presenters still seems to work. When I ask what Clarkson’s most annoying habit is, Hammond thinks for a moment, then says, “The way he is.” He laughs at this and adds, “He can be grumpy, but we can all be. You cannot spend as much time together as we do without winding each other up and occasionally feeling homicidal. We don’t socialise together away from the show because we would never be apart if we did.”

He has noticed that when he is with a group of men, in a pub say, they tend to treat him in the same way that Clarkson and May treat him, as the butt of their jokes. “But that’s the great thing,” he says. “You bump into strangers and they engage with you as if they were part of the show. In terms of approachability, I think it helps that I’m small. Although I’m probably not as small as people imagine. I think they are sometimes disappointed when they see I’m not something out of a circus. Unlike Jeremy. He does belong in a circus. He’s ridiculously tall.”


Shooting series two of The Grand Tour

For all his eagerness to be seen to fight back, I get the sense of there being an element of Stockholm syndrome about Hammond’s relationship with Clarkson and May. I suspect he is much more liberal than any caricature of him allows. He voted Remain and he admires Jeremy Corbyn. “I like that he makes noise and stands for something. We need more Corbyns, on both sides.”

At the faux castle, there is as impressive a collection of cars as you would expect, from an E-type Jag, Lagonda and Bentley to a Mustang, Porsche and Model A Ford. The vehicle he seems most fond of, though, is an old Land Rover Discovery that has 130,000 miles on the clock. “I do the school run in it and it’s full of hairbands and socks and books and notepads and food,” he says. “It’s a health hazard, which I don’t like driving at night because you hear things rustling. When it’s done, we’re going to take it out into a field and bury it.”

There are also 37 motorbikes, a reminder that, as a child, Hammond had motorbike wallpaper. There is also what he calls, in between vaping, “the campest man cave ever”. It’s true. As well as a beer cooler, it has a 19th-century blackamoor candelabra light fixture next to a baby grand piano. There is also an ornate love heart with the words “Richard and Mindy” written above and below it in coloured glass and shells.

As well as looking after all their cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, sheep and hens, Mindy writes a weekly newspaper column. She is also handy with a hairbrush and does Hammond’s hair by the Aga before our photoshoot. And while he is doing the shoot, she collects eggs to make him an omelette for his lunch. She seems to mother him, in other words, and perhaps that, after all his traumatic ordeals, is what he wants – and needs – the most.



The Grand Tour returns on Amazon Prime on December 8


www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-hammond-i-really-thought-i-was-going-to-die-vwb7wtf0k

 

[dit]

Excellent article!