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Richard Hammond has revealed how his wife saved his life by screaming in his ear when he was in a coma about to die after his horror car crash in 2006.
The former Top Gear host, 52, spoke about being seconds from death after doctors had said he wouldn’t make it – before miraculously surviving the ordeal.
Back in 2006, the presenter sustained brain injuries in a 288mph rocket car accident while filming for Top Gear.
Scary: Richard Hammond has revealed how his wife saved his life by screaming in his ear when he was in a coma about to die after his horror car crash in 2006
Speaking in a TikTok video, Richard was sat under a tree in the Lake District as he recalled what could have been his final moment.
He told how he found strength within his mind to regain consciousness as he dreamt about the stunning area of the UK.
‘In hospital, in intensive care, things were apparently not looking very good, but I didn’t know. There was a lot of morphine floating around my system’, he said.
Love: The former Top Gear host, 52, spoke about being seconds from death after doctors had said he wouldn’t make it – before miraculously surviving the ordeal (pictured with Mindy in 2017)
‘I finally woke and I shared with my wife Mindy a dream I’d been having. A really, really vivid one – probably, partly, on a count of the morphine.
‘And in my mind I’d been walking these hills here in the Lake District, overlooking Buttermere. I was having a lovely time strolling along and gradually I got a growing sense of — you know when you know you’re in trouble? That feeling grew and grew.’
As Richard walked further up the slope, towards one particular tree, the feeling of trouble got stronger.
Life: Speaking in a TikTok video, Richard was sat under a tree in the Lake District as he recalled what could have been his final moment
He remembered: ‘It grew and grew until eventually in my dream I turned back… and then I woke.’
After Richard told his wife Mindy about his dream, she enlightened him what had been happening at the same time in the hospital room.
He explained: ‘She had been called into intensive care and told ‘Mrs Hammond, I’m really sorry. Things aren’t looking good… we’re going to lose him.”
Ordeal: He told how he found strength within his mind to regain consciousness as he dreamt about the stunning area of the UK
Wow: Richard said: ‘And apparently she roared and screamed and swore at me ‘don’t you dare die’. And that’s when I turned back from this tree in my dream. And that’s when I woke’
When told there was nothing she could do to help, Mindy asked if she could try shouting at him.
‘And she did. And apparently she roared and screamed and swore at me ‘don’t you dare die’. And that’s when I turned back from this tree in my dream. And that’s when I woke.’
He added: ‘My last thought took me somewhere I love and somewhere I’m happy.
‘And that last thought, if I had shut down and stopped, would have echoed, as far as I was concerned, for all of eternity. And I’ve found immense comfort from it ever since.
Terrifying: Back in 2006, the presenter sustained brain injuries in a 288mph rocket car accident while filming for Top Gear (similar vehicle pictured)
‘I’m not scared of this old tree. I pass it regularly… every time I pass it, I do feel comforted. I know it’s where I’ll go.’
Richard was in a coma for two weeks in September 2006 after the jet-powered Vampire car he was driving for Top Gear at 288mph suffered a burst tyre during a landspeed record attempt.
He suffered serious head injuries and he was in hospital for five weeks before returning home to his wife Mindy and their two daughters, Isabella and Willow.
Despite the horrific crash, the presenter has emerged remarkably unscathed.
His left eye, however, was badly bruised, which Hammond referred to as looking like a ‘Klingon eye, all lumpy and full of fluid.’
The TV presenter later told how he struggled ‘mortally with depression’ and spoke regularly to a psychiatrist following the incident.
He previously recalled in an interview with The Mirror: ‘I was upside down inhaling a field. My nose and eyes were full of earth. I’d gone ploughing on my head. My very last thought was, “Oh bugger, that’s gone wrong”.
‘Well we’re checking out now. You’ve had it’. I was aware of my brain saying,”We’ll wave the flag’ – and that was the point I passed out”.
Incident: He suffered serious head injuries and he was in hospital for five weeks before returning home to his wife Mindy and their two daughters, Isabella and Willow (pictured with Mindy in 2022)
‘Doctors use a point system. Fifteen is normal, three is flatline. I was a three. I was that close to being dead.’
Hammond was on his final run of the day when the crash happened.
The presenter said he was in a ‘bad way’ when the air ambulance arrived. Richard recalled how the next thing he knew he was in Leeds hospital.
At first, doctors predicted a 15-month hospital stint at a private clinic in Bristol – but he returned home after five weeks.
Richard suffered with his mental health in the aftermath. He described how the trauma made him feel ‘panicked, desperate and mad as a bag of snakes’.
In 2017, Richard was again airlifted to hospital after flipping a £2million electric supercar which then burst into flames as he filmed his new Amazon show The Grand Tour.
But he miraculously escaped the fireball horror with little more than a fractured knee and was ‘conscious and talking’ after freeing himself from the vehicle.
His Grand Tour colleagues May and Clarkson were ‘staggered’ he survived because there was ‘nothing left’ of the vehicle. Grand Tour producer Amazon later released images showing the burnt-out wreckage of the car laying upside down on a hill.
Oh dear: In 2017, Richard was again airlifted to hospital after flipping a £2million electric supercar which then burst into flames as he filmed his new Amazon show The Grand Tour
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