President Hammond

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Richard Mark Hammond was born on 19 December 1969, in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, eldest of three sons of Alan and Eileen Hammond. His younger brothers are Andrew and Nicholas. He is the grandson of workers in the Birmingham car industry. In the mid-1980s Hammond moved with his family to the North Yorkshire cathedral city of Ripon located 8 miles south of the village of Thornton Watlass where his father ran a probate business in the market square. He attended Blossomfield Infant School in Solihull's Sharmans Cross district from the ages of 3 to 7. Originally a pupil of Solihull School, a fee-paying boys' independent school, he moved to Ripon Grammar School, and from 1986 to 1988 attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology. He has shared that he was somehow expelled from sixth form college when he was 17. After graduation, Hammond worked for several BBC radio stations, including Radio Cleveland, Radio York, Radio Cumbria, Radio Leeds and Radio Newcastle; as well as working for Renault's press office as a means to meet people from the motoring press. In the period when he was presenting the afternoon programme at Radio Lancashire, his regular guests included motoring journalist Zog Ziegler, who would review a car of the week during a phone interview conducted by Hammond. The two became good friends, and it was Ziegler who encouraged Hammond to enter motoring reviews on television. After starting out on satellite TV (Men & Motors), he auditioned for Top Gear.

In Their Own Story

During filming of a Top Gear segment at the former RAF Elvington airbase near York on 20 September 2006, Hammond was injured in the crash of the jet-powered car he was piloting. He was travelling at 288 mph (463 km/h) at the time of the crash. His vehicle, a dragster called Vampire, was theoretically capable of travelling at speeds of up to 370 mph (595 km/h). The vehicle was the same car that in 2000, piloted by Colin Fallows, set the British land speed record at 300.3 mph (483.3 km/h). The Vampire was powered by a single Bristol-Siddeley Orpheus afterburning turbojet engine producing 5,000 lbf (22 kN) of thrust. Some accounts suggested that the accident occurred during an attempt to break the British land speed record, but the Health and Safety Executive report on the crash found that a proposal to try to officially break the record was vetoed in advance by Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, due to the risks and complexities of such a venture. The report stated: 'Runs were to be carried out in only one direction along a pre-set course on the Elvington runway. Vampire's speed was to be recorded using GPS satellite telemetry. The intention was to record the maximum speed, not to measure an average speed over a measured course, and for (Hammond) to describe how it felt.' Hammond was completing a seventh and final run to collect extra footage for the programme when his front-right tyre failed, and, according to witness and paramedic Dave Ogden, 'one of the parachutes had deployed but it (the car) went on to the grass and spun over and over before coming to a rest about 100 yards from us.' The emergency crew quickly arrived at the car, finding it inverted and partially embedded in the grass. During the roll, Hammond's helmet had embedded itself into the ground, flipping the visor up and forcing soil into his mouth and damaging his left eye. He ultimately suffered a diffuse axonal injury. Rescuers felt a pulse and heard the unconscious Hammond breathing before the car was turned upright. Hammond was cut free with hydraulic shears, and placed on a backboard. 'He was regaining consciousness at that point and said he had some lower back pain.' He was then transported by the Yorkshire Air Ambulance to the neurological unit of the Leeds General Infirmary. Hammond's family visited him at the hospital along with Top Gear co-presenters James May and Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson wished Hammond well, saying 'Both James and I are looking forward to getting our 'Hamster' back', referring to Hammond by his nickname. For five weeks while Hammond was recovering in hospital, Clarkson sent a funny message to Mindy, Hammond's wife, every day to try to keep her going. Hammond thought if everyone found out, Clarkson would 'die of shame' 'cos it makes him look soppy'. The Health & Safety Executive report stated that 'Hammond's instantaneous reaction to the tyre blow-out seems to have been that of a competent high performance car driver, namely to brake the car and to try to steer into the skid. Immediately afterwards he also seems to have followed his training and to have pulled back on the main parachute release lever, thus shutting down the jet engine and also closing the jet and afterburner fuel levers. The main parachute did not have time to deploy before the car ran off the runway.' The HSE notes that, based on the findings of the North Yorkshire Police (who investigated the crash), 'the accident may not have been recoverable', even if Hammond's efforts to react were as fast as 'humanly possible'. Hammond made his first TV appearance since the crash on the BBC chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 22 December, just three months after the incident, where he revealed he was in a medically induced coma for two weeks and afterwards suffered from post-traumatic amnesia and a five-second memory. Despite saying he was 'absolutely fixed' on the Jonathan Ross episode, in 2011, while talking to the Daily Mirror, Hammond admitted he had no memory of the interview, saying: 'I lost a year. I don't remember doing the interview with Jonathan Ross or doing Top Gear Live in South Africa' showing the full impact of his brain injury five years before. The crash was shown on an episode of Top Gear on 28 January 2007 (Series 9, Episode 1); this was the first episode of the new series, which had been postponed pending Hammond's recovery. Hammond requested at the end of the episode that his fellow presenters never mention the crash again, a request which has been generally observed, although occasional oblique references have been made by all three presenters. On The Edge: My Story, which contains first-hand accounts from both Hammond and his wife about the crash, immediate aftermath, and his recovery, was published later that year. In February 2008, Hammond gave an interview to The Sunday Times newspaper in which he described the effects of his brain injuries and the progression of his recovery. He reported suffering loss of memory, depression and difficulties with emotional experiences, for which he was consulting a psychiatrist. He also talked about his recovery in a 2010 television programme where he interviewed Sir Stirling Moss and they discussed the brain injuries they had both received as a result of car crashes.

Reader's Guide

Hammond became a presenter on Top Gear in 2002, when the show began in its revamped format presenting alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Jason Dawe. In a July 2015 interview with The Guardian, producer Andy Wilman, who worked with Hammond on Top Gear and subsequently The Grand Tour stated Hammond was close to being fired by the BBC after the first series of the 2002 revival format of Top Gear but was ultimately reprieved. Hammond has sometimes been nicknamed 'The Hamster' by fans and his co-presenters due to his name and relatively small stature compared to May and Clarkson. Following a high-speed dragster crash while filming in September 2006 near York, Hammond returned in the first episode of series 9 (broadcast on 28 January 2007) to a hero's welcome, complete with dancing girls, aeroplane-style stairs and fireworks. The show also contained images of the crash, which had made international headlines, with Hammond talking through the events of the day after which the audience broke into spontaneous applause. Hammond then requested that the crash never be mentioned on the show again, though all three Top Gear presenters have since referred to it in jokes during the news segment of the programme. He told his colleagues, 'The only difference between me now and before the crash is that I like celery now and I didn't before'. Following the BBC's decision not to renew Clarkson's contract with the show on 25 March 2015, Hammond's contract expired on 31 March. In April, he ruled out the possibility of continuing to present Top Gear, commenting via Twitter that 'amidst all this talk of us 'quitting' or not: there's nothing for me to 'quit'. Not about to quit my mates anyway'. On 12 June 2015, the BBC confirmed that Top Gear would return with a 75-minute special, combining two unseen challenges featuring all three presenters from series 22, with studio links from Hammond and May. It aired in the UK on BBC Two on 28 June at 8 p.m, and in the United States on BBC America on 13 July at 9 p.m. In 2003, Hammond became the first presenter of Brainiac: Science Abuse; he was joined by Jon Tickle and Charlotte Hudson in series 2.

Did You Know?

• Hammond was close to being fired by the BBC after the first series of the 2002 revival format of Top Gear, but was ultimately reprieved.
• During his Vampire dragster crash, Hammond was travelling at 288 mph (463 km/h) and suffered a diffuse axonal injury.
• Hammond was in a medically induced coma for two weeks after the crash and later suffered from post-traumatic amnesia and a five-second memory.
• In 2011, Hammond admitted he had no memory of his first TV appearance after the crash on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, saying 'I lost a year.'
• Hammond's father ran a probate business in the market square of Ripon, North Yorkshire, where the family moved in the mid-1980s.