From left: James May, Jeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond on location for The Grand Tour
(Picture: Amazon Prime Video)Richard Hammond has stood by the decision of producers to show James May’s horror crash in full during upcoming The Grand Tour Presents: A Scandi Flick.
In their latest outing, May was travelling at 75 mph when he crashed into a wall at a naval base, hitting his head with force.
He was rushed to hospital for tests, including a brain scan and, luckily, he was only left with a broken rib.
Hammond himself has been involved in a number of high-speed crashes over the years, including a particularly nasty one in 2006 when he was driving a jet-powered car, the Vampire dragster, which was theoretically capable of travelling at speeds of up to 370mph.
He found himself requiring urgent hospital care when one of the tyres unexpectedly failed on a structural level, caused the car to lose control, before rolling over.
With this in mind, he says May’s crash is “no worse” than anything that they’ve shown before in their two decades of filming together.
“It’s the story, it’s what happens. You have to tell the story as it unfolds,” he argued to the Standard in an interview to promote the new special.
“My crown as the one who crashes has been stolen by James May and I’m quite happy to let him have it,” he joked after assuring that May has now made a full recovery.
The first episode of season five of The Grand Tour sees Hamilton, Jeremy Clarkson, and James May re-team for their first post-pandemic road trip where they head to the icy wastes of the Scandinavian Arctic Circle.
At the wheel of their three favourite rally cars, the men embark on a catastrophe-filled adventure that takes in Cold War submarine bases – frozen-lake racetracks, crashes, and ski-resort chaos as they drag their homemade houses from the coast of Norway to the Russian Border.
The very first series of The Grand Tour began filming in 2015, following their departure from another show that will not be named.
Asked if they are still as passionate about making The Grand Tour today as they were then, the Solihull-born star replies: “We love doing it because it’s what we do.
“We’ve been incredibly lucky that it became as big as it became and that we’ve been allowed to carry on doing it as long as we have – I’m never going to do anything bigger than this, so it’s become my career, and I’m really lucky and really glad of that.
“We’re very appreciative of the fact that we have been very lucky to get to make the shows on the scale that we have and we do.
“And weirdly, they’re still evolving and changing because through lockdown we could make those two shows, but we couldn’t go stand in a desert or a jungle or a glacier, so we had to do somewhere more local.
“But what that did was remind us that at the heart of the show is three blokes who love cars and people like watching that. Whether or not you like cars, you don’t have to like cars,” he continued.
“People watch shows about baking cakes or throwing pots on a wheel, they don’t have to do that at home themselves, we just like watching people who are passionate about things.
“So that could come to the front of it and I think it did, in this show I think you get a reminder that, ‘oh, wait a minute, those three really are nuts about cars!’ because we loved the cars that we had on the show.
“We’ve worked together for so long that, when we start one of these adventures from moment one, the director will shout ‘action!’ The cameras are all pointing and it’s like we all three step into a world of being there all along since the last special that we did and it’s like it never ended.
“And we know, if we say or do certain things, how the other two will react, which means we can have a great time. Whether you want to provoke a laugh or anger, we know what buttons to press and that’s great, it’s a real advantage.”
Hammond has been a familiar presence on TV and radio for almost four decades, but says he is now ready to take a step back and wants to help nurture the next generation of talent.
He explained: “I’ve been in front of a camera and microphone for 34 years, I love doing it, it’s my first role, but I also like the creative process and would like to help launch some other careers.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky – I mean incredibly lucky with the way things have gone for me and so I would like to see if I can help get some other careers off the ground, why not?”
Admitting it’s not entirely for selfless reasons, he added: “It makes me feel good.”
