Richard Hammond, After Dinner Speaker, Top Gear Presenter, aka "Hamster", Motoring Journalist, Daily Mirror Column, Richard Hammond is an award winning British television presenter best known for co-presenting Top Gear. Earlier in his career he worked at Radio York and Radio Cumbria, and then moved onto various TV projects with various channels. Along with his work on Top Gear he has also presented Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky One, and Should I Worry About...? for the BBC, together with Time Commanders. He also has a weekly motoring column in the Daily Mirror. In July 2005, Richard won the dubious accolade of being voted number one in a Heat magazine poll of the top “weird celebrity crushes”. In 2005 he was also voted one of the top 10 British TV talents. He is sometimes referred to as “Hamster” by fans and his co-presenters on Top Gear. His nickname was further re-enforced when on two separate occasions, Richard ate cardboard, mimicking hamster-like behaviour. On 20 September 2006, Richard was seriously injured in a car crash while filming for Top Gear at the former RAF Elvington airfield near York. He was piloting a jet-powered Vampire car, which is theoretically capable of travelling at 370mph. He was said to be travelling at 288mph at the time of the crash. He was taken to the specialist neurological unit of the Leeds General Infirmary. Many thought he would not return but he made a spectacular recovery and the film of the crash was part of the show broadcast in January 2007.

This page uses CSS to present the content in the best possible manner. If you can see this message, then CSS (or JavaScript) is not enabled in your browser, and the page will not appear as the designer intended. We suggest you use the latest Internet Explorer (www.microsoft.com) or Netscape (www.netscape.com) browser.