(Image: Ian West/Press Association)
Richard Hammond has revealed the best piece of advice he was ever given.
The former Top Gear presenter, 56, told the High Performance podcast the advice came from his late father who would say: “Always keep low in a dingy.”
“Bloody good advice,” Hammond said. “It really is, because you will fall out of it – you stand in a dingy, you’re going over.”
“Best piece of advice ever given to me by my late father,” he added.
Hammond discussed his time on Top Gear and the Grand Tour on the podcast.
He also reflected on the brain injury he sustained in a crash in York in 2006.
Hammond crashed a jet-powered dragster called Vampire at nearly 320mph while filming for Top Gear at the former RAF Elvington airbase in 2006.
Although the incident left him with serious head injuries, he recovered and returned to the show in early 2007.
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He told the High Performance podcast he fears the brain injury could lead to early onset dementia but he is “too scared” to get tested for the condition.
Hammond, who now presents Richard Hammond’s Workshop on Discovery Plus, was brought up in North Yorkshire and left Ripon Grammar School in the middle of his A levels before studying visual arts at Harrogate.
His first broadcasts emanated on BBC Radio York. “It took me about a week just to put one piece together,” Hammond once told an interviewer. “And I only got paid about £10, so I worked part-time in a bookshop and a petrol station and collected chicken eggs on a farm.”