www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006440317,00.html
By JEREMY CLARKSON SEPTEMBER 23, 2006 IN the wee small hours of Thursday night, just 30 hours after what is almost certainly the world's fastest ever car crash, Richard Hammond suddenly sat up in bed, opened his eyes and asked what had happened. he asked, before getting out of bed and walking, shakily, to the lavatory. It really did seem that he'd had a look through death's door and decided he didn't like what he saw on the other side. Later, he looked across at James May and said: "Hello C**k face." Despite all the odds, it seemed we'd got our Hamster back . Two years ago, Richard Hammond, James May and I agreed on a plan of action should one of us be killed while making our show, Top Gear. We decided that after the announcement of the death was made in the following week's show, the next word should be "anyway". So if the Hamster had ever careered through the Pearly Gates in a flaming 200mph fireball, I would put on a sombre face, say that Richard Hammond had died and then, after a small pause, say: "Anyway, the new Jag . He skedaddled into the office one day and, bubbling with his trademark enthusiasm, said: "Hey, why don't we go somewhere and drive really fast? But what we liked even more was the idea of James May being given the assignment. He thinks dawdling is reckless and practises the art of what he calls "Christian Motoring". Mostly, this involves letting people out of side turnings and generally being Edwardian.
Putting him, and that '70s barnet, in a 370mph jet car was a bit like putting just Jane Austen at the helm of a space shuttle. Immediately, James discovered a prior engagement and said he couldn't go. I, meanwhile, decided that I spent most of my thirties upside down in jet fighters and helicopter gunships, vomiting, and that these days I was far too fat. That left Hammond, who was bouncing around like the donkey in Shrek shouting, "Pick me. Today, people who have absolutely no idea at all of how television works, (Yes, columnist Neil Lyndon -- that's you, you sanctimonious, rent-a-soundbite little t**d) are saying that our producers push us to do more and more dangerous stunts in a bid for ratings. Our producers spend their whole lives filling in health and safety forms and asking "are you sure?" It's the presenters who come up with the hare-brained ideas and trans-continental races .
Richard with Clarkson and May on day before smash I know one bloke who has driven it and he said simply: "It was brilliant. So, the day before his fateful encounter, I shook Hammond's hand and said "goodbye". "I'll probably be killed," he joked with a huge, beaming smile. He also knew that in Top Gear's 28-year history, no one on the show has ever been hurt. Right now no one knows for sure what caused the accident. Film footage seems to point the finger of blame at a tyre. The tyres were from a Nascar racer in America, chosen specifically because they have super-stiff side walls. Or five million if he'd thought there was half a chance. People with beards and dirty fingernails are now saying he should never have been in that car, doing that kind of speed. They make out it's all terribly complicated and that you need years of practice.
From what I understand, you sit there, you push a lever to light the afterburner and you then push another to shut off the fuel supply -- it runs on heating oil -- and deploy the parachutes. Of course, behind the scenes, there was a small army of people making sure all went well. The Vampire team had even brought along a device to measure wind speed. Nothing that could be left to chance had been left to chance. But chance itself was still sitting there, waiting to bite. As the car began its series of sickening rolls, at a speed that boggles the mind, Richard's head was taking a ferocious pounding as his helmet smashed into the protective steel cage. And it was rolling around inside his head at 300 revs per minute. He landed upside-down, with his helmet, full of soil, buried in the earth. And more than that, after a few minutes of unconsciousness, he was lucid. When I first heard of the crash, I was doing a rather miserable 175mph in an Aston Martin at our test track in Surrey. So I carried on driving round corners a little too quickly while shouting. But later it became apparent that Richard was much more seriously injured than we'd thought. She's one of those women who takes things in her stride but this was something else. She'd told daughters Willow and Izzy that Daddy had crashed another car and messed up his clothes. At four he was giving very serious cause for concern but as the sun rose, he'd rallied a bit. In fact, he looked like a Klingon, with a massively swollen eye and a huge lump on his forehead. The only good news, so far as I could see, was that his teeth were still as shiny and bright as ever. It's genuinely hard to know how Mindy could be so upbeat when her husband was so badly dented. May even admits to having been "a bit unmanly" at one point. But anyone who ever experiences the emergency care it provides always notices just how un-rubbish it is in reality. From where Richard Hammond was lying, it was about as terrible as Angelina Jolie's left breast. They were coping brilliantly with a forest of flowers being sent by well wishers. Outside, in the real world, one internet site had raised 4,000 for the air ambulance that had saved Richard's life. Sky News was deluged with thousands of goodwill messages.
While James was leaning over, whispering to our bashed-up friend, Mindy started to stroke his hair and I noticed the hamster's heart rate had shot up from 60 to 75 beats per minute. Then came the moment when I said: "The reason you're here mate is because you're a c**p driver." You can never tell after a brain injury what long-term implications there might be. And the next day after he said, "Hello C**kface" to James May, it looked like he might just win back everything else as well. You'd think that the joyous news would silence the vultures circling the crash site since the accident, rejoicing in the fact that Top Gear had finally been taught its lesson that speed kills. The campaign to have us taken off the air -- sparked curiously, by the BBC's own news website -- will now be ramped up, fuelled by the environmentalists and spearheaded by muddle-headed road safety campaigners. Read Clarkson in The Sun every Saturday Hamster with pet Richard ... looks after dog RICHARD Hammond puffs on a fag as he cares for his pet dog just 24 hours before the crash that almost killed him. The Top Gear presenter was joined by his Labradoodle pet -- called Top Gear Dog -- as he filmed for the TV show with co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May They were testing out new bio-fuels in a field in Eyeworth, Beds. Onlooker Russell Griffin said: "They had a really good laugh. But Richard was a bit distracted looking after his dog which picked up grass on its fur from running around."
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