Richard Hammond Biography
Richard Hammond born Richard Mark Hammond, is an English presenter, writer, and journalist. He was born on 19 December 1969 in Solihull, Warwickshire, England.
From the age of 3–7, he attended Blossomfield Infant School in Shirley. He then went to Solihull School and moved to Ripon Grammar School. From 1986 to 1988, he attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology.
Richard Hammond has worked in telly and radio since finishing Art College. He started work at BBC Radio York in 1989 as a programme assistant on the mid-morning show. He was fired from BBC Radio York in 1990 and went to work at BBC Radio Leeds. Then BBC Radio Newcastle, Radio Cumbria, Radio Cleveland and Radio Lancashire.
In 2002, he auditioned for an all-new series of Top Gear and got the job. Since then, Richard Hammond has gone on to do lots of other programmes, including a kid’s science show called Blast Lab, various grown-up documentary programmes and series about science and engineering and the intellectual powerhouse that is Total Wipeout on BBC1.
Richard Hammond Age
Richard Hammond was born on 19 December 1969 in Solihull, Warwickshire, England.
Richard Hammond
Richard Hammond Wife
Richard Hammond has been married since May 2002 to Amanda Hammond, a columnist for the Daily Express. They have two daughters.
Richard Hammond Daughters
Richard Hammond and his wife Amanda Hammond have two daughters; Isabella who was born in 2000 and Willow who was born in 2.
Richard Hammond Accident
While filming in September 2006 near York, he was involved in a high-speed dragster crash. 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.
Hammond crashed a Rimac Concept One on 10 June 2017 while filming for The Grand Tour in Hemberg, Switzerland. He was on his last run up a timed hill climb course when, just after crossing the finish line, he lost control of the car rolling it several times before it came to rest on its roof. He suffered a fractured knee, but was “conscious and talking” after the crash, according to a source from the show.
Richard Hammond Height
Richard Hammond stands at 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m).
Richard Hammond Family
Richard Hammond was born to mother Eileen and father Alan. He has two younger brothers; Andrew and Nicholas. Hammond and his family moved in the mid-1980s to the North Yorkshire cathedral city of Ripon where his father ran a probate business in the market square.
Richard Hammond Wedding
The Top Gear presenter’s 315mph crash affected his memory and made him forget he was married. Mindy, who has co-written Hammond’s book On The Edge: My Story, which documents life before and after the crash, said: “He didn’t believe we were married.
“He said ‘you’re lovely, but I’ve got to stop talking to you because I’ve got to go back to my wife, she’s French’.”
Richard Hammond Gay
Richard Hammond has been criticised for linking eating ice-cream with being gay on the sixth episode of the first season of The Grand Tour, the TV motoring show he co-hosts with Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
The exchange occurred on Happy Finnish Christmas, the sixth episode of the first season of the show, which was released on Amazon Prime on 23 December.
In front of a live audience, Clarkson pointed to an image of the interior of a Rolls Royce, saying: “The only problem is that in one of those, you couldn’t enjoy a chocolate Magnum ice-cream.”
“It’s all right, I don’t eat ice-cream,” replied Hammond. “It’s something to do with being straight.”
Clarkson and May appeared taken aback as members of the studio audience applauded and cheered.
“Why are you applauding him?” Clarkson, apparently aghast, asked the crowd. “What do you mean? … You’re saying all children are homosexual?”
Hammond continued, saying: “Ice-cream is a bit – you know”. He added: “There’s nothing wrong with it, but a grown man eating an ice-cream – it’s that way, rather than that way …
“I’m right. I can’t believe you can’t see that. It’s easy. It’s in front of you.”
Clarkson and Hammond then joked about “the chocolate thingy” in a 99 ice-cream cone, with the latter declaring: “My case rests!”
A spokesman for LGBT equality charity Stonewall said Hammond’s choice of words was not only ridiculous, but “chosen purposefully to mock and belittle”.
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: “It is a perverse world when an everyday pleasure like ice cream becomes the butt of homophobic innuendo. That Richard Hammond thinks he needs to boast his heterosexuality is weird … His pandering to prejudice is bad enough but the audience applause makes it worse. It shows that we still have some way to go to end bigoted banter.”
Richard Hammond Net Worth
Richard Hammond has an estimated net worth of $25 million.
Richard Hammond Books
- On the Road: My Life in Eight Journeys
- Richard Hammond’s Great Mysteries of the World
- Or is That Just Me?
- As You Do
- On The Edge
- A Short History of Caravans in the Uk
- Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab
- Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab Bright Ideas
- Can You Feel The Force?
- Car Science
- Car Confidential
- What Not to Drive
Richard Hammond TV Shows
- 1998–2002: Motor Week (Men & Motors TV series)
- 1998–2002: Car File (Men & Motors TV series)
- 2002–2015: Top Gear
- 2003: Top Gear: Back in the Fast Lane
- 2003–2006: Brainiac: Science Abuse
- 2004–2005: Crufts
- 2004–2005: Should I Worry About…?
- 2005: The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend
- 2005: Time Commanders
- 2005: Inside Britain’s Fattest Man
- 2006: Richard Hammond’s 5 O’Clock Show
- 2006: Petrolheads
- 2006: School’s Out
- 2006: Richard Hammond: Would You Believe It?
- 2006: Richard Hammond and the Holy Grail
- 2006: Battle of the Geeks
- 2007: Last Man Standing
- 2007: Helicopter Heroes
- 2007: Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel
- 2008: BBC Timewatch
- 2008, 2010: Sport Relief
- 2008–2012: Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connections
- 2009: Top Gear: Uncovered
- 2009–2011: Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab
- 2009–2011: Total Wipeout
- 2010: Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds
- 2010: Hammond Meets Moss
- 2010: Top Gear: Apocalypse
- 2011: Richard Hammond’s Journey to the Centre of the Planet
- 2011: Richard Hammond’s Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean
- 2011: Top Gear: At the Movies
- 2011: Richard Hammond’s Tech Head
- 2012: Richard Hammond’s Crash Course
- 2012: Planet Earth Live
- 2012: Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature
- 2012: Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars
- 2013: Richard Hammond’s Secret Service
- 2013: Hammond meets Moss
- 2013: Take Two with Phineas and Ferb
- 2013: Top Gear: The Perfect Road Trip
- 2014: Phineas and Ferb
- 2014: Richard Hammond’s Wildest Weather
- 2014: Top Gear: The Perfect Road Trip 2
- 2014–2015: Science of Stupid
- 2015: Richard Hammond’s Jungle Quest
- 2016—: The Grand Tour
Richard Hammond Cars
- 1931 Lagonda 2-litre Supercharged.
- 1942 Ford GPW
- 1963 Opel Kadett
- 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 in Highland Green.
- 1969 Dodge Charger R/T
- 1969 Jaguar E-Type, purchased for £50,000 in 2009
- 1979 MG Midget
- 1985 Land Rover Range Rover Classic
- 1987 Land Rover Defender-110, known as “Buster”
- 1999 Lotus Esprit 350 Sport
- 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT-8
- 2015 Porsche 911 GT3 RS
- 2016 Ford Mustang convertible in white with black Shelby stripes
- Land Rover 110 Station Wagon
- Land Rover Discovery 4 SDV6 HSE
Richard Hammond Twitter
WTF is this garbage they’re serving up to our Queen? What’s the point if it comes down to this? I mean … really? Happy Birthday? This is what we’ve got together and decided you’d like? … save me.
— Richard Hammond (@RichardHammond) April 21, 2018
Richard Hammond Interview
Source: www.caranddriver.com
You’ve been in the States for six weeks. Are you homesick for England?
Richard Hammond: 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.
Top Gear is being watched more and more here. Are you being recognized?
Richard Hammond: 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.
It’s a hit on anyone’s scale.
Richard Hammond: 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.
Isn’t the problem with the American Top Gear that it is by its nature an artifice? It’s following your example.
Richard Hammond: 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.
Is Top Gear still about cars?
Richard Hammond: 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.
How does Crash Course, which premieres this spring, relate to that Top Gear sense of authenticity?
Richard Hammond: 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.
So will you keep your 997 Carrera S, or will you get the new 991?
Richard Hammond: 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.
Is there anything you’d have done differently?
Richard Hammond: 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.