Richard Hammond: ‘I don’t want my little girl getting hurt – but I won’t stop her career’

When Richard Hammond’s daughter hurtled a Formula E car into a wall earlier this year, the collision inevitably drew headlines given her dad’s track record of serious car crashes.

Izzy, 25, emerged onto the Jeddah circuit unscathed, but Hammond, 56, came terrifyingly close to death after crashing a jet car at almost 300mph while filming Top Gear in 2006.

‘It’s a little uncomfortable because I know from personal experience that things can and do go wrong,’ he admitted to the Metro when asked about seeing his daughter exercise her own taste for the fast lane. 

‘I’m a father, like any other father. I don’t want to see my little girl hurt, but I don’t want to hold her back from opportunities that present themselves. She’s carving her own career, so I can sit back and watch her do that and only applaud.’

Hammond’s 2006 car crash is pertinent to his hotly anticipated return to The Grand Tour, alongside Jeremy Clarkson and James May, after they handed the keys to a new trio of whippersnappers.

Amazon Prime Video has shared a raft of details about the upcoming season; Hammond will feature on a Wales jaunt to test out the mettle of cars, since he ‘knows a thing or two about crashing’.

Whether he approved such verbiage about his near-fatal car crash, I can’t say, because the show’s former presenter doesn’t appear that keen to talk about the cameo. His answers certainly become far more concise.

‘We might pass through fleetingly, yes,’ he says of the cameo. Naturally, I press. Anything else he could share? ‘No I’d be shot immediately. I’d be dead. I can’t be talking about that.’

Not what you want to hear in an interview where you had hoped for some insight on the upcoming season. He does wish the new hosts – James Engelsman, Thomas Holland and Francis Bourgeois – ‘the very best with it’, which he reiterates three times.

‘We had our time with it. That’s great. That was our Grand Tour, but The Grand Tour can go on with other people doing it, and I wish them all the very best with it. Of course, I do,’ he says.

We move on to matters Hammond appears more excited to talk about, like what he would say if asked to make more Total Wipeout, after the success of similar reboots like Gladiators.

‘I probably would,’ he says. ‘I loved it. I enjoyed the singular lack of ambition of the show. It never wanted to be anything more than entertaining on a Saturday evening. If people wanted to go and do it, then good luck to him.’

There’s also the matter of that other show Hammond hosted once upon a time. We’re speaking before the rumours that Jimmy Carr could helm a reboot of Top Gear, so no word on that, but he’s keen for the show to be back on the air.

‘People don’t know what’s going on. I regularly talk to people in pubs now, and they’ve never heard of synthetic fuels,’ he says, going on to list other car components which, I’ll admit, I also have not heard of.

‘I think there’s room for car shows looking back at what a wonderful machine the car has been and will continue to be. But at the same time, a car show that says, If you’re thinking of buying one, here’s stuff you need to know about. It’s the second biggest buying decision many of us will make.’

We set out to make a car show all those years ago. It just grew into something that nobody foresaw.

Regardless of how it ended, the fondness for the trio’s Top Gear endures, with a legacy in meme-able moments (‘Sometimes my genius…it’s almost frightening’) and a range of cracking specials. Most recently, the infamous Patagonia two-parter was top of mind during the World Cup’s fateful England v Argentina match.

‘It’s really satisfying to have been part of a show that had that effect, that becomes that touchpoint for people,’ Hammond says of such resurfaced moments.

‘We never thought for a second that it would. We set out to make a car show all those years ago. It just grew into something that nobody foresaw, and I was really privileged to be a little part of that.

‘It makes me mostly proud when people refer to it or come up to me and say they’ve watched it since they were a kid. It makes me feel old because often they’re fully fledged adults in their own right. But there we are.’

One such opportunity petrolheads have to bend Hammond’s ear is this weekend at Salon Privé. He describes it as a ‘luxury motoring lifestyle event’, where he judges the Concours de Vente car competition.

‘In some circles, these Concours wins actually contribute towards the value of the car itself… You can’t just pick the one that you prefer the colour of. It does need some due consideration to be given,’ he says.

Should you be at the Blenheim Palace event this weekend, you can also sample Hammond’s line of tipple. When I point out that all three of the Grand Tour gang have gone into the booze business, he laughs: ‘Suspicious, isn’t it?’

He adds: ‘My dear colleague James launched a gin, even though of the three of us, I’m the one that’s always drunk the gin. Jeremy of course has his lager, which I have to admit, annoyingly, is really rather good. 

‘So all three of us did because if you like people, if you like getting together, if you like chatting, having a drink can go along with that really rather well. You can do all these things without, but also it can be part of it and be a great social communal thing.’

And whose brand of booze is best? ‘Mine. Clearly.’

Salon Privé runs from September 2 to September 6, with tickets available here.