Biography
Originally from the West Midlands, in the mid 1980s Hammond moved with his family (mother Eileen, father Alan, and brothers Andrew and Nicholas) to the Yorkshire market town of Ripon where his father ran a probate business in the market square. A pupil of Ripon Grammar School, from 1987 to 1989 he attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology and was friends with author and academic Jonathan Baldwin. He then went on to gain a degree in photography and television production.
He lives near Cheltenham with his wife Amanda, whom he married in 2002, and their two young daughters, Isabella and Willow. He also has three horses, four dogs, two cats, a rabbit and a handful of chickens and sheep.
In July 2005, Hammond won the dubious accolade of being voted number one in a heat magazine poll of the top "weird celebrity crushes." Also in 2005, he was voted one of the top 10 British TV talents.[1]
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Radio and television career
Early in his career, Hammond worked at several radio stations, including Radio York, Radio Cumbria, Radio Leeds, and Radio Lancashire,[2] before going on to present a number of daytime lifestyle shows and motoring programmes on Men & Motors.
He presented the Crufts dog show in 2005, the 2004 and 2005 British Parking Awards, and has appeared on School's Out, a quiz show on BBC One where celebrities answer questions about things they learnt at school when they were younger. He has also presented The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend. Along with his work on Top Gear, he currently presents Should I Worry About...? on BBC One and Time Commanders on BBC Two, and also presented the first four series of Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky One. He is also a team captain on the BBC Two quiz show, Petrolheads.
From Tuesday 3 January 2006 until Friday 10 February, Hammond was the eponymous star of Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show with his co-star Mel Giedroyc of Light Lunch fame. The programme, which discussed a wide range of topics, was shown every weekday on ITV1 between 5:00 and 6:00.
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Top Gear
Hammond became a presenter on Top Gear in 2002, when the show began its present format. 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 in Series 7, Hammond ate cardboard, mimicking hamster-like behaviour. Another running gag by co-host Jeremy Clarkson is Hammond's supposed use of teeth whitener, after he was caught looking at a website on teeth whiteners on Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show. Hammond has continually denied this, and once quipped to Clarkson: "Mine have gone whiter, naturally, in the same way that yours have gone green."
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Cars
He is known to be a Porsche enthusiast, and particularly the Porsche 911. His left-hand drive Porsche 911 has appeared on Top Gear in the studio once. He has stated that an original Dodge Charger is his dream car, mostly because "it's the car the bad guys drove...It's the James Dean of cars: was great, but unlike the Ford Mustang, died young, and therefore embedded itself as nothing but greatness." Hammond also owns two Land Rovers, a Suzuki GSXR1000, a BMW 1150 GS, a second Porsche 911, a Porsche 928 , a Morgan V6 Roadster, a 1967 Ford Mustang and several kit cars.
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September 2006 car crash
Wikinews has news related to:
Richard Hammond injured in jet-powered car crash
At approximately 5:45pm BST on 20 September 2006, Richard Hammond 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. It was not in an attempt to break the British land speed record. He was said to be travelling at 280mph at the time of the crash. He is being treated at the specialist neurological unit of the Leeds General Infirmary and is currently in a serious, but stable condition.[3] BBC reports suggest that he was air-lifted from the crash scene unconscious.[3] North Yorkshire Police have said that they "received a report via the fire service of a male person trapped in an overturned jet car which had been driven on the airfield." [4][3].
Sky News and BBC News report that he was driving a Vampire jet car powered by a Rolls Royce Orpheus Turbo-Jet Engine; the very same car that currently holds the British landspeed record at 300.3mph. [5] [6] Primetime Land Speed Engineering have now denied reports that Richard was making an attempt to break the land speed record, although telemetry on one of the runs did suggest that he had reached 300mph.[3]
According to witnesses, Hammond was completing a final run to collect extra footage for the programme when "One of the parachutes had deployed but it went on to the grass and spun over and over before coming to a rest about 100 yards from us." When rescuers arrived at the car it was upside down and "dug in" to the grass. Rescuers felt a pulse and heard Hammond, who was unconscious, breathing before the car was turned right way up. Hammond was cut free, put in a neck brace and placed on a stretcher before the air ambulance arrived. "He was regaining consciousness at that point and said he had some lower back pain".[7]
ITV News reported that Hammond had broken the British land speed record and was on a last run, filming extra scenes for Top Gear, when the accident took place. Hammond's family are with him, along with doctors, Top Gear representatives who were there when the accident took place, as well as Top Gear co-presenters James May and Jeremy Clarkson who travelled to the Leeds Hospital. Jeremy Clarkson is quoted by the BBC as saying "Both James and I are looking forward to getting our 'hamster' back.", referring to Hammond by his nickname.[8]
Shortly after 11:30pm, Leeds General reported that Hammond's condition was "stable." By 10am, the Hospital reported Hammond was in a serious but stable condition showing "some improvement" overnight.[3]
A quote from Dave Ogden from Event Fire Services, present at the scene of the accident, as broadcast on Sky News that evening: "He was just doing the final run of the day - I don't know quite what happened - but the parachute deployed. There was quite a lot of smoke and the car veered off to the right and on to the grass, and it overturned several times and it came to a halt a couple of hundred yards in front of us."
The doctor treating Hammond announced on September 21 that he has a "significant brain injury" but is reasonably optimistic he will make a good recovery.[3][9] It also became clear that Hammond's co-presenter James May was originally supposed to be driving the car.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hammond