'Richard is winning his fight' By JEREMY CLARKSON

[Jesus_Christ]

Just read this, and thought it might be enjoyed by some of you lot! Made me laugh!

'Richard is winning his fight' By JEREMY CLARKSON - The Sun 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.

“You’ve been in a car accident,” I said. “Was I driving like a tw*t?” he asked, before getting out of bed and walking, shakily, to the lavatory.

His wife, Mindy, couldn’t believe her eyes. None of us could. 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 . . .”

It was a sort of joke. But then this week, it sort of wasn’t.

The idea to drive a jet car actually came from Hammond. 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? I don’t mean supercar fast. I mean REALLY fast.”

We all liked the idea. But what we liked even more was the idea of James May being given the assignment.

James is known to his fans as Captain Slow. 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. Pick me”.

And so we did.

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.

Rubbish. 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 . . . not the backroom boys or the suits.

The car Hammond was set to drive is called the Vampire. It’s powered by a Rolls- Royce Orpheus jet engine — as used by the Red Arrows — and currently holds the British land speed record of 300.3mph.

I know one bloke who has driven it and he said simply: “It was brilliant. Although I did fill my pants.”

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. “Anyway . . .”

He knew that he was embarking on a dangerous mission. And this is what no one seems to understand. He was looking forward to it. He likes the buzz.

He also knew that in Top Gear’s 28-year history, no one on the show has ever been hurt. Not even Ray Mears can claim that. Or Anthea Turner or even Janet Ellis.

Right now no one knows for sure what caused the accident. Film footage seems to point the finger of blame at a tyre. And that’s something you can’t prepare for.

The tyres were from a Nascar racer in America, chosen specifically because they have super-stiff side walls. But it does seem that one of them burst.

How fast was Richard going? Well on the run before, he’d reached 315mph. So it’s likely he’d hit that speed again. Richard isn’t the sort of man who goes backwards. If he thought he’d done 315, he’d be trying to do 317. Or 320. 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.

Rubbish. 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. A hamster could do it. In fact, a hamster did.


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.

That was bad, but inside his body things were worse. He will have been subjected to maybe 100g. This means his brain will have weighed 71 stone. 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. Amazingly, he was alive. And more than that, after a few minutes of unconsciousness, he was lucid.

“I want to do a piece to camera”, he told the crew. He even fought the ambulancemen, who said he couldn’t. No surprises there. Richard likes fighting. He does it a lot.

When I first heard of the crash, I was doing a rather miserable 175mph in an Aston Martin at our test track in Surrey. Everyone was quite upbeat. He didn’t appear to be badly hurt. So I carried on driving round corners a little too quickly while shouting. I even went out for dinner with friends that night.

But later it became apparent that Richard was much more seriously injured than we’d thought. Doctors described his condition as critical.

At the hospital, his wife Mindy was being a star. She’s one of those women who takes things in her stride but this was something else. She was laughing. She was joking.

She’d told daughters Willow and Izzy that Daddy had crashed another car and messed up his clothes. So she was taking him some clean ones. Richard had a bad night. At four he was giving very serious cause for concern but as the sun rose, he’d rallied a bit.

He didn’t look very “rallied” to me. 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. They’d just exchanged contracts on a new house. They were about to take out a joint mortgage. And yet, she was still cheerful. James May and I weren’t. May even admits to having been “a bit unmanly” at one point.

There’s one thing though. All we ever hear about the NHS is that it’s rubbish. But anyone who ever experiences the emergency care it provides always notices just how un-rubbish it is in reality.

Leeds General Infirmary is a no star hospital. According to the bureaucrats, it’s terrible. But trust me on this. 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. “They’re lovely,” said Mindy, and then, after a pause . . . “Do you think anyone will send cash donations?” 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. The Sun received messages from all over the world.

And there was some hope. 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.


“Christ, James. He thinks you’re doing the stroking,” I yelled.

Quickly, the heart beat settled down again. Then came the moment when I said: “The reason you’re here mate is because you’re a c**p driver.”

And he smiled.

I knew then that he was going to pull through. And God it was a relief.

You can never tell after a brain injury what long-term implications there might be. He might have no sense of taste, or double vision. His teeth may go brown. Or he may be absolutely fine.

The only thing I knew was this: he was going to live.

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.

Somehow I doubt it though. 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.

Richard is winning his fight. And now mine begins. To make sure that he has a show to come back to.
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If you ate Stephen Hawking, would that count as one of your "five a day" portions?

[killa]

Nice one Jeremy, hope he's back on TV soon.


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Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Bike:- Yamaha TRX850 | Killas Biking History | Killas Gaming History | Killas autmotive history

[White Noise]

good report, amazing if its true about him getting up and taking a pi$$
hope TG doesn't get taken off as its the mad stuff and the continetial races make it.
it would also be strange with out richard hammond as the trio seems to fit with the 3 different takes on things
WN
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Buy my wife: 96' Yam XJ600s (Diversion)
Wing Commander White Noise - SE Clique
Riding Tip #86: See God, then back off a bit: Problem is i haven't seen god yet, just a close up of tarmac on revett straight

[LewisD]

[2Smoke]

[lozzypop1]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Glad he seems to be pulling through.

Good luck to Clarkson to keep the series going. Hopefully Hammond is going to prove the doom mongers wrong.

[pedant mode]It is technically a Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Adour engine, being a joint venture between RR and Turbomeca. Although the Orhpeus engine was used in the Folland Gnat which the Red Arrows used before the Hawk[/pedant mode]

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[RealNinja]

Great news, Top Gear is the only motoring programme that I will watch, it would be criminal for it to be taken off the air

emails at the ready ladies and gents........
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You will become my force of retribution. Where you tread, doom will follow. Go now and claim your destiny

[2Smoke]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Maybe that was the problem. The engine wanted to do some more aerobatics.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[The View Askew]

Top gear owns and always will.

And fuck anyone who tries to stop it, in the arse with a 14'' cactus.
____________________
"Do what you always did, get what you always got"

[Jesus_Christ]

[Sadie]

[palmer]

[Johnny GSX-R]

"Hello CockFace"



ROFLMAO

Big to the 'Hamster' and the team.

[White Noise]

[Misc]

Glad he's o.k, seems like a nice chap.

[tribal_tiger]

According to the BBC he is just out of high dependancy and is now just on a normal ward!

Not bad thinking that he had probably the fastest ever car crash and it was only on Wednesday!
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How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris?

All of it.

[Dazbo666]

BIIIG to Hammond. Hope his recovery continues just as quickly!!
Top Gear is the only car show that I watch regularly (even tho I'm not a big Clarkson fan)... Richard Hammond is the best / most genuine presenter in the show IMO

Get well soon, hamster!!!
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1st bike (Sept'06 - May'10) : 1991 GPZ500S / Current bike (since Nov 2009) : 2003 Suzuki Bandit 600N
Word of the day : DILLIGAF

[Dom_]

Glad hes pulling through, my stepmum got all worried when i told her, shes a fan of him ever since she met him on holiday.

[The View Askew]

[shorty]

From the news reports I have read it appears that the new series of Top Gear will be delayed until Hamster is well enough to appear.

It was due to start on the 8th October - I guess that means it will take him about 3 weeks to get his teeth back to eye blindingly white

Shorty
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Triumph Daytona 675 Triple
Triumph Tiger Sport 1050

[owdamer]

Has anyone noticed seen itv's coverage of the story? They've dragged up various ex top gear presenters, stunt co-ordinators and self proclaimed experts and in my opinion thrown loaded questions at them. It seems to me that they are trying to say that the presenters are pressurised into doing dangerous stunts, That health and safety rules are ignored, etc. I always thought the BBC was a very biased organisation, but ITV's coverage shows them to be just as bad. I cant help feeling they would have preferred it if Hamster had died.

[Teaman]

at the end of the day Hamsters belong in a wheel, not behind them






nice to know hes doing ok
____________________
There is no point in ranting about someone stupid because there is nothing u can do about it. There is no cure for stupid.
Someone stupid does not realise they r stupid.stupidity is indistinguishable from malice U just have to accept that some people are thick as p1gsh1t and work around them.

[MarJay]

There is a petition against it on the BBC website forum apparently too though, so it isn't just ITV, its the whole liberal 'Safety Nazi' establishment.

JC will have to work hard to keep his show on the air.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F; Cheap project: CBR900RR FireBlade
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.