Richard Hammond

He has recently recovered from a serious brain injury sustained in a high-speed (288.3 mph, 464.0 km/h) crash during filming for Top Gear in September 2006. At the end of January 2007, Top Gear was back on screen in the United Kingdom and showed the footage of the crash in which he nearly died.

Originally from the West Midlands, in the mid 1980s Hammond moved with his family (mother Eileen, father Alan, and younger 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, and of Solihull School, a fee-paying boys' independent school in the West Midlands, from 1987 to 1989 he attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology and was friends with author and academic Jonathan Baldwin. He gained a BTEC National Diploma in Visual Communications but chose not to pursue a career in this direction.

Early in his career, Hammond worked at many radio stations, including Radio York, Radio Cumbria, Radio Leeds, and Radio Lancashire, 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 BBC2, and presented the first four series of Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky One. He is also a team captain on the BBC2 quiz show, Petrolheads, in which a memorable part was one where Hammond was tricked into smashing his classic Ferrari while trying to parallel park blindfolded in another car.

From January 3, 2006 until February 10, 2006, 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.

In July 2005 Hammond won the dubious accolade of being voted number one in a heat magazine poll of top "weird celebrity crushes." Also in 2005 he was voted one of the top 10 British TV talents.

As part of Red Nose Day 2007, Hammond stood for nomination via a public telephone vote, along with Andy Hamilton and Kelvin MacKenzie, to be a one-off co-presenter of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on March 16th 2007 . However, he was defeated by Andy Hamilton.

In April 2007, Hammond presented a one off special on BBC Radio 2 for Good Friday. He is scheduled to present more Bank Holiday specials for the station.