Richard Hammond: The heartbreaking conversation that I am STILL avoiding!

It was answering a question that I'd always wondered. Where'd I'm at? It was like, oh, it's now. Would you please welcome Richard Hammer!

You can see top-get presented, round-top presenter. One for the biggest TV shows in history. It's fair to say that he has the best job in the world. Be funny, quicker, angry.

Every compensatory measure that anybody who's diminutive in height has ever made, I've done. It's one of the reasons I'm a broadcaster now. Sure. There's a cost in that, don't we?

Yeah. What's the cost? Was there a moment in the journey of top-get where you thought this is big? We went out in front of 60,000 people.

Just before when I was a class, I had three guys with less talent, ever gone out with more people. Is there any guilt associated with your success? Yeah, there is. I want to prove I'm not a lucky idiot.

So, I took some risky decisions. Have you ever punted that you might? I've overdone it. Richard Hammer has been seriously injured in a car crash.

They had called Mindian. They said I think we're losing him. I had very bad post-traumatic I'm an easier, like a one-minute memory. I have to consciously write them and say I'm work hard to recall them.

Do you worry about that? I did. The damage was done. It's good to have a look, find out.

Are you scared to find out? Yeah. Richard. Can we start by you giving me your context, your earliest context?

Wow. Yep. Little fella. Born in Birmingham.

Mum and Dad. I'm the eldest of three brothers. Quite a close-knit family. My mum's dad worked in the car industry.

He was a coach baller. So, he was trained as a cabinet maker, working with wood. Then he went into coach building, which is an old days when cars had a steel chassis and then they'd have an ash, usually wooden frame over the top. So, that's where he started because he was a cabinet maker, skills are relevant.

But then he stayed in the car industry and finished up working at Jensen. So, cars were always, they were always in my imagination. They weren't, like, littering the drive. Because, you know, we had modest liens.

So, we had a purple marina coupe. It was like a best car. But I loved them. And that grew into an obsession.

Yeah. So, schooled there until 15. And then we moved north as a family. And I went to Ribbon Grandma's school up in the north.

And from there started working radio in 1988. That's a long time ago, isn't it? I wasn't alive back then. Yes.

Thank you so much. We've already discussed this as I was coming in. We mentioned that. The fact that I talk regularly to, like, full grown adults, like, people.

You do lots of good stuff. And there's, oh, yeah, I love your show. You used to watch it when I was a little kid. Yeah.

I've done it. That. You've led a life that is a real anomaly in many respects. You've done some unbelievable things that people were just doing.

When I think back in my own life, I try and pinpoint the moments of influence. Whether it was a TV show I watched or something that happened. For better or for worse. Like you said with your dad and his love for cars.

That made me end up living a life that was a little bit different. When you think about those things and why you became an anomaly. One of those anomalous influences. See, my favorite game is to look back and pretend they were all part of some great plan.

Yeah. For me, I guess, I always liked expression. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to draw really well.

I loved art at school. I loved English. I loved writing. But I loved photography when I was about 10.

I improvised a little dark room under the stairs. I am black and white photographs. So I loved all of that. But I was very much.

Things like that for other people. I think it was a Birmingham thing. Brom is, I've always had to, brom is don't go, wow. You're average brom, you'll never go.

Wow. No, no, no. That's not how I made a dead ex-girlfriend like that. It's just something we do.

We don't profess to do that. We don't do that. And you kind of need to have to do that to then think that's what I might pursue. So key moment, am I making this up as being a key moment?

I don't know. It feels like it. When I was eight, something like that, nine. My dad's parents lived in Western Superman.

So we'd go on holiday there, which meant an endless drive from Birmingham. Yes, before the motorway. Went all the way. That's going to be a theme.

We went all the way down to the Western Superman to see them. And we were walking along the front there. There was a low sea wall and a beach down here on my right. And I saw there was a bit of a fuffle going on a bit later on.

And a lot of people gathered around and some people holding things in the middle. And it was Derek Griffiths, resenter, who was doing a piece of camera. And there was a camera there. And I remember thinking, that's amazing.

He's been so animated and talking to that thing. There's nobody there, but he's talking to it. He's engaging with it. It's almost pulling a response out of it.

And I think that was, I didn't leave that experience going, that's it. I'm going to be a television presenter because that was for other people. Just as being a photographer was for other people or an artist. But it was there in my heart.

That's when I thought, I did that. That feels amazing. What was for you? If that was for other people, what did you think was for you?

I don't know. I guess it, I would never have imagined anything that I've done happening to me. None of it. For me was just, that bit older than you.

And possibly there's a generation that were raised by people who were glad to have got through the war. And for whom what they really wanted was just a quiet life with nobody trying to kill them or their parents or their loved ones. So I wonder if there's echoes of that. And I think that was maybe still echoing around Birmingham.

That what you really wanted was just to make sure everything's okay. Just to give everybody's all right. We can have a family life and we can just progress without making a fuss, sticking head over the parapet because that brings risk. So avoid that, don't.

So I never would have dreamed. I'm saying I was directionless. How do I ask you 18 or 16? What are you going to do when you grow up?

What would you have replied? 16. I'd have replied. I just want to write me moped.

I'd have wanted to be an artist. A great painter. But I'd taken no meaningful steps towards it at all. Because, again, lacked confidence.

Yeah, I was sort of... That would only have happened if a miracle had occurred. Do you know what I mean? If you have an option that you're not actually pursuing actively because you think that's not funny, but I'll keep it in there.

Admittedly, what I'm saying is I was hoping to win the lottery, but I wasn't doing the lottery. But it feels like that. But by 18, I just said I want to be in radio and ultimately TV. And that's what ends up happening, right?

You go into the... Yeah, well, I sat my own levels under a different examination board and a different syllabus from that under which I'd studied. And then I went into sixth form. But it reached a point eventually when the teaching staff thought it might be better if I went somewhere else.

Literally anywhere else. Just not there. Just don't mean... They chucked me out.

But not for anything heroic. But I wasn't one of those... Yes, I'd set fire to the janitor's car. I was annoying.

I was an irritant. And I wasn't focusing, so they slung me out. What do you mean, when you say annoying, you mean, oh God, just whining with teachers up or something? Yeah.

Trying to be funny. Every compensatory measure that anybody who's diminutive in height has ever made. I've done. I've only discovered recently that one of my dearest friends, Zog Ziegler, whom I've known for 30 odd years, he's 20 years older than me.

In emails referring to me to other people, he copied me into one by accident about 10 years ago. He always calls me Little Napoleon. I didn't know he'd been doing that. He looked a bit shame-faced, but he still does.

Yeah, he exhibited all of those traits. I was just irritating. Honestly, really annoying. Do you know why?

Because I was conscious of being smaller than everybody else and I wanted to be a bigger noise in the room. I wanted to sort of disrupt and do stuff. But I didn't want to be naughty. I still hate being in trouble.

I hate being in trouble. It bothers me. And it did then. But honestly, I wouldn't have put up with me.

You know, there's like a stereotype that if you're smaller in stature, that you're insecure, that it becomes almost like a shame or insecurity as a young man and then you kind of act against that by exhibiting certain behaviors. Was that true for you? Was there ever like a shame of being smaller? It was...

Yeah, I guess you don't really. It's not something you crave. Although, I suppose there are lots of tall people who often wish and had a similarly difficult time as a child because you're always sticking out the crowd and you don't always want to. You can't make yourself small.

It genuinely doesn't trouble me now. I mean, the truth of the matter is, often when I meet people for the first time and if they've seen me on the telly, there's a moment and they're disappointed because they're expecting to meet something that you'd hang on a Christmas tree or put on the mantelpiece. But I'm actually about five or seven-ish, so I'm fairly average, really. So I'm consistently worked with much taller people.

But yeah, it did drive me on as a kid. And I do... It's bullying. I've never bleated about it.

But it is. And it influenced me greatly. Yeah. Yeah, it's...

I overcompensated. I felt I had to. It's almost like you take that as a kid. I mean, you take that into the room with you.

Anything that makes you different, whatever that is, you take that in the room with you and it's kind of... You have to deal with it and you have to deal with it. You have to compensate for it. Be funnier or be quicker or be angrier or noisier or naughty.

You have to somehow compensate for this thing, which is to do with, I guess, if you could bring that thing with you into a room and it was simply absorbed and it didn't matter. Then you could be the person behind all of that. So yeah, I think it did influence one of the reasons I'm a broadcaster now, for sure. Really?

Yeah, bad to me. Must be. Must be. I've often thought really, if you're lucky enough, it's a bit of...

People seldom have careers now as broadcasters as I think of it because they're personalities and that's a different game. But I come from an era when it was a craft. You know, I spent a long time learning about how to address an audience through radio. You never pluralize the audience.

You talk to people one-on-one or sorts of things. And those craft skills have gone and they've gone from TV, they're all... Is that a bad or a good thing? I don't know if actually we're getting to see people genuinely as they are if we're celebrating interesting personalities rather than somebody who simply learned to craft.

Maybe that's better. But I was pushed to do it, I think, in part by that. And I've often said that the worst people to pursue it, as in the worst people to deal with the trappings of success in the media, are by definition the same ones who are the only ones driven enough to achieve it because they're compensating. So that's why it can be damaging because only the man or one who was so desperate for it would have...

Hang on, and endured sacrificing friends and time and spare time and sometimes dignity and whatever else in order to get there. And they're therefore the least able to deal with it when whatever it was that they craved has given them. But they'd be better off solving the craving, removing the craving, than feeding it. That's my theory.

I said this to my girlfriend yesterday. I did bed at 1am. You said? The point about how people that strive to have the admiration, that's called it, or the success, whatever the sort of external validation may be a broad way to kind of describe that are also the ones that once they get it will struggle the most to deal with it.

Whether it's because of the scrutiny that comes with it, or the power that comes with it, or whatever that comes with it. That's my exact point. Exactly. I think it's fairly obvious when you see it that way.

I'm not against all of that. We live in that world where people can project their personalities across the world. That doesn't trouble me. I think it does trouble me.

Occasionally I'll meet a young person, a kid, and they'll say, I love what you do. I'd love to be famous. And I'll always stop at that. Always.

Really? Why? Because it's a byproduct of a fascinating and potentially rewarding job, and it can be important. It can be powerful even.

But the fame itself just means it's embarrassing standing on a train on your own because everybody's staring at you. That's amazing. That's all it means. I guess if you live in London and go out and I might mean you can get a restaurant table.

But you can only get that if you win your own. Hi. I'm kind of a big dealer for television. Can I have a teller?

Can I have a teller? Can I have a teller? Can I have a teller? Can I have a teller?

Can I have a teller? Can I have a teller? Can you feel even worse when you come? Were you aware that you were being driven by some kind of insecurity throughout that period?

I learned to fight early on. I learned to punch up on my way to make a noise, to be brave. If there's some idiot on his bicycle trying to jump over some action man toys on a ramp hitting me. Yeah, I knew.

I knew. I was small kid just screaming, notice me, notice me, notice me. I think. I think.

And the bottom there, of course. A lot of us don't. We'll have traits that aren't always the best, but that are rooted in justifiable cause. But if your job then rewards it, if you are needily showing off, my mommy stops showing off.

That's my childhood. But if you're then rewarded for it, wait a minute, your brain is sort of remapped a little bit to go, oh, so that isn't a bad thing. I should pursue that because I literally am rewarded financially and people seem to like me. So I'll continue doing it.

It's why my midlife crisis has lasted 20 years and it's still going on. Quite enjoying it. I cut, you know, I cut maybe 10, 20 episodes ago on this podcast because I'd heard similar themes in my guests that they were being, they were almost describing themselves as being dragged by insecurity. And I was, I started to make this kind of distinction between being driven, which is maybe for intrinsic reasons or whatever.

And then being dragged where there's some kind of void you're trying to fill or insecurity you're trying to, to mend or some validation of seeking and, you know, you're either in the front of the car, driving down a bit, or you're kind of on the end of it being dragged by this pursuit of like validation and how at some point in our lives, we probably need to like take hold of this during world and be conscious about the direction we're travelling in and not being dragged by the insecurity or the desire to be liked, whatever it might be. Was there a point in your life where you're, the thing driving you moved from being that, you know, insecurity or that pursuit to show off and the validation it creates to being a little bit more conscious because I sometimes worry in myself and also in the conversations I have that if we don't at some point realise what's driving us, it might drive us to the wrong place. Am I drag us to the wrong place, should I say? Initially, I don't know, I spent that much time thinking about it like that because heck, it was work.

If you're a freelancer in radio in 1988, 1989, you go where the job is and you live in where the bed seat, you're going to live in to do it because I love the job. And it's not, I didn't, it wasn't a long introspective naval gazing party. It was, this is really cool. I really enjoy it.

I've had a rather new radio station and if I was lucky, we'd be given the radio station car, which was often quite a new car, which was, and dispatched in that with a newer tape recorder, which is a real quarter-inch tape recorder. That to you is a steam train. So I'm going to iPod, I think. No.

It's about 20 years before the iPod is, honestly, it belongs in the museum, but that's what we use. So I'd be dispatched without going to an interview with no mobile phone to look up. But when I got there, I loved it. I still love harvesting people's thoughts and ideas and sharing them via any medium.

I mean, look, what we live in and out of what you're doing, what we can do, what I do, drive truck that I now run, that is about doing exactly that. And it's almost your generation, I guess, and the agencies that you run and the work that you do, you're that bit further than I am from, as I'm still closer to still being amazed, I used to have a fantasy when I was working radio to go and do interviews. Again, no mobile phone. So you had to pick up a phone with a curly wire and make the appointment.

And you had to be on time because you couldn't just turn up and then, oh, I'll call you when I get there. You had to go to mobile phones. It didn't exist. And there was no internet to research where you're going.

So you're all sat and out. So you took a paper map and navigated your way there. And you did your interview. You could link up live with the radio station, but through like a radio mask that you had to put up.

And then you go back and I used to fantasize about, imagine if I could just go anywhere and do live broadcasting. It's just the other day we were having a meeting with the guys that work with me on drag drive and we were talking about, I'm not going to tell you because you're going to do it and you'll take it from a cracking idea for a show we want to do on platform. And it involves first of all, Lucy, one of the people in the team. She's going to go off and do this thing.

And we can do it. We can link live. What? Maybe those of my generations should keep hold of that amazement and just keep it going because it will be, I mean, to you, that's of course you can.

I'm still a bit amazed by that. Is that a good thing? Is it useful? I'm going to say, yeah, but I'm only saying, yeah, for romantic reasons because actually it makes no difference at all.

The fact is you can practically, you can do what you can do. So do it to good effect. Sitting there hoping I'm done going, what's amazing that we can do it probably doesn't help. What do you think?

Better to be gratitude, right? There's a lot of gratitude in there, which is healthy feeling. Yes, there is. I'm grateful that we are able to do that.

I'm grateful that we live in the time when we can come up with an idea sitting in my barn having a meeting and then just do it. That's amazing. And a younger generation or a generation that haven't been exposed to the change might not, they just have an expectation that it happens. So there's less gratitude involved in the fact.

Yeah, it's made them grow up like I did. Exactly. With no mobile phones and just a open stick to play with. Do you?

I do sometimes ponder if that world, without the internet. My analog world. Well, it would be a much more enjoyable world for the human being to live in. I kind of link some up back to what we were talking about earlier where if you think about the essence of what it is to be human, I don't think we're supposed to be exposed to this much information and this much sort of global connection in terms of like the bombardment of notifications and this constant stimulus, which leaves you in that fight or flight state.

The drive to do that is quintessentially human and it's one of the reasons we proliferate the way we have that spending of gossip and sharing of information and sharing of mutually agreed standards be that industry show me gossip or religion or anything else. But sharing those is what they enable us to work together in huge numbers. Otherwise we would be in little individual groups still and togethering. So it's been key.

It was inevitable. I think it's run away a bit. I think the critical nature of gossip and sharing all of that because we've developed this way of doing it. But maybe it'll decrease in import.

Maybe we'll need bigger spikes in it to actually grab our attention. But I don't think we can't condemn it because we've pursued it. What's come out of us? We have all the options.

That's what we need to look at what we'll do for us. I think it'll water down. It'll dilute. I wonder if the brain has evolved at the same pace as it is.

It can. It is a limitlessly flexible bucket of super electricity, isn't it, really? An indented mine crashing to the ground. 320 miles an hour.

That was typical. We only did that because I'm a short bloke. That is short bloke all over. Anyone want to drive this rocket power dragster?

Me, me, me. I'll do it. Then it crashed. But I did damage mine.

And there were all sorts of anomalies within it. Ways in which it didn't work as it should. Emotional responses all over the place. No big modes of control issues, but some.

But it would be wide. It fixes. And there's loads of instances of it doing that. The brain can recover and literally physically reshape and function post physical trauma.

Then it can also, we could evolve. We could be evolving now. Will it be genetically encoded and passed down? So will a new generation following on from you evolve?

Will they carry pre-coded that information to deal with our digital world? Well, physiological change is no. But then it's human beings because we have to have the capacity. You might be born a Wall Street billionaire, a fisherman in an Amazonian village.

The same essential ingredients have to do that. We have to have that limitless flexibility. So maybe that's why our brain will. Maybe it'll always retain that flexibility.

Which means by definition, it can't evolve in a distinctive route. Because that's narrowing options. We're still born in this incredible capacity to do anything within a very broad range of things. And we need to hang on to that.

I mean, all the major alphas to do is endure a six foot drop when it's born and be able to run a few minutes later. And you're away. That's it. We have to do a lot of other stuff.

I wonder. Part of the reason I ask this question is because I'm trying to think about a lot of the things we're seeing with mental health and how it appears that situational and environmental factors are causing, of the modern world, causing the brain to struggle in many ways. And a fundamental level. Whether it's loneliness, that's driving the brain to feel a sense of purposelessness or something.

Or whether it's overstimulation, which is causing anxiety. And the brain is struggling to cope with that. That's kind of why I was asking the question as to whether the brain is keeping up with the nature of the modern world. Because there seems to be a lot of symptoms that it isn't.

But there's only so many stimuli that can be received and registered via our various senses and organs into that lump in there. There's only so many things that I think you might attribute magical qualities to an analogue existence. And you can see why we would. Because an analogue existence has a degree of definition that couldn't be achieved digitally.

Because you're always limited. Whereas it's a bit like trying to explain science in the world using science. Trying to explain the universe using science. It's only the language of it.

It isn't absolute. These aren't the facts. They're a version of facts that we can share between us. And sharing and communicating is what we do.

It's what defines us. So that's all it is. It's the language of that is. But it doesn't have the definition.

You're fine enough. It's still like trying to paint the Mona Lisa using Lego bricks. It's not quite fine enough. But I think a digital world is even less fine.

Because it's zero. It's absolutely. In what we do, it's greater. It turns empirical data on whether or not something is being approved of if you're making a marketing film.

As opposed to sticking your finger in the air and seeing which way the wind's blowing. And are people looking at that poster outside the bus station? Yes. But the poster outside the bus station in the analogue world has a final level of detail.

Then I think you could do digitally. But are you saying that it's intrinsically bad that we're drifting towards a digital world and away from the analogue because the analogue contains something that can stimuli stimuli. Are you stupid? You could replicate.

We could honeycomb the entire world. You could be put into a pod into which you could be given sufficient physical, mental stimuli, which is not chemicals to maintain what is measurably a healthy human being. Would you be? I guess I'm asserting that humans clearly have some fundamental needs.

You know, shelter, connection. I was going to say psychological safety much less than a human need, but it's important. And some of those things seem to be being stripped away by the nature of the world we live in today. Where, you know, in America, when asked how many people you've got to turn to in a time of crisis, the answer used to be three.

I think it's the modal answer. The media answer is now zero. Trees are now pointed to the first loneliness are, they think loneliness is significantly worse than smoking 20 cigarettes a day, reduces your life expectancy by 10 years. And I wonder whether that's almost like a human response to something that's been stripped away from the way we live our lives over the last one ever.

You know, like living in four walls alone is a single bachelor ordering my food using a glass screen, ordering, like, dating using a piece of glass, stimulating myself, potentially using a piece of glass screen in my hand. And then the processed food that I'm eating, I'm just wondering. And then, you know, the constant stimulation of this dopamine hit from this glass screen, as well in my hand, that's keeping me awake at night, hurting my sleep and then keeping me in fight or flight because I'm nervous about something on this glass screen, you know. But if that's the answer, well, what is the answer to that?

Because we made it collectively as a species. We have gone that route. I'm not saying we've gone that way. Well, yeah.

I'm not saying we've gone that way. We must continue doing that. It might well be that disruptors need to put the hand up and say, you know, sure. I wanted to talk about the car because I believe that the car is sort of an expression of some of that because in that analog world, which all right, I'm from, you've got those needs.

So you need shelter, I suppose, warmth, food, stimulation, supplies, mate. Once you've got to be on cave, a car comes to represent all of it. That's why it's important. That's why it very quickly became the symbol because you've got shelter.

But when you do start to death and die of loneliness and boredom at the back of the cave, no, you need to leave it and get that that you need. And something that can get you there first to the kill, to the mate, to the resources is powerful. That's what the car became. You're very passionate about the role of the car in society, aren't you?

Yes, I am because I want to represent, which is everything other than shelter. Yeah, and here's me getting all poetic and romantic and dewy-eyed about the analog world because I think something that moves you physically, corporally, from one place to another. That's powerful because I'm taking my person, my son and the universe only exist for each of us in here. So I'm taking, therefore, the universe with me to wherever it is, I'm going to do whatever it is I'm going to do.

And that makes it impossibly exciting. And for that reason, I think it'll ever go away. It's up to you. That really was a big thing.

Come on. Yeah, it was remarkable. I've done car shows, I've done radio for years. Moved to the south to get a job at Renault in the press office, not to get to know the editors of the car shows, which I really did.

One of whom, Pete Baker, saved me and gave me a job on Granada Menomodas making the car shows. And then eventually after years and years and years and years of doing that, I auditioned for the new talk here and got the job. When you got that job, did you, what were your expectations of the role of the show? Really, I cried.

Really? I cried. And I couldn't really let you champagne the mobile car. Yeah, I was just, well, I'd spent my whole life trying to do that, so it did work.

Yeah, yeah, it was a huge moment. But we just thought we'll make a car show. I remember the conversation in White City, BBC HQ. With most of us, it's before James joined, but the rest of us were all in place.

And weirdly, some of the people we still work with now, we were all in that room. And we'll say, right, these are the grand rules of talking. It's about the real world. Cars that people really buy, no supercars, no foreign travel.

We're only going to drive proper cars that people buy in this country. And then that didn't last very long. We realized, that's not what people wanted. Not what we wanted to make.

We never made it with any science or calculation. We just made the best car show we could. And we were lucky things aligned. The world wanted that show, three misshapen blokes, talking about their passion.

But I don't think you'd have watched that pottery show. I don't care about pottery at all. But watching people are so into it, you know, the lovely chap cries when somebody does something. It's like, wow, watching people engage with, indulge or share their passion.

It's incredibly compelling, whether it's for making pottery or baking or dancing. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

I want to know more about why. Like, why did people love it? You're touching on some psychological elements there. But what is it doing for the viewer at home in terms of what is it giving them?

Because it's not just cars. Oh, no, no. We were still a car show. But we always say, you don't have to be a car nerd to watch it.

We do that for you. I think it was a means of escape, but through a relatable portal. Because you could look at all of us, three. And let's be honest, we're none of us.

Brad Pitt. We're none of us. Pretty good. Really?

You could. I think people would always find they'd identify with one of the three of us. Am I a little short, squeaky, friendly one. Or I at the ball.

Graceful. Long heads. We'd sort of take you along with us on whatever adventure we were going on. It's why we ended up making today the big drips.

Because that's what people liked. The proper escape. The one thing that troubles me, though, is about that business, about the subject being important. If you're going to make a TV show, a podcast.

It's internet content. Whatever. About something. The subject leads.

It has to have that authenticity and integrity to it. Because we, the audience, will see when it doesn't. And it's a task for some reason. Or always, if somebody's going to make a TV show or a piece of internet content.

They're like, do this thing about cars. Okay. And then they don't get anybody who knows about cars involved in making it. But you wouldn't do that if it was baking or dancing or cooking or sport or football.

And you wouldn't. You'd want that baked in. Because it's not so the wrong foot your consumers, your viewers, or catch them out or show off that you know more than they do. But you can demonstrate this is real.

This is an authentic passion. And we always get that right at the forefront. It wasn't big. But it was there.

Even though what we were doing was ridiculous often. How much of it was scripted per se? I was watching some clips earlier on. And I was, there was such a moment of brilliance.

I was wondering, is that a producer in that ear telling them to crack that joke or to like save that to him? Or is that just them being comfortable enough to be free? The really good bits are in the moment. But I mean, that's easy to guess, isn't it?

You've said some killer, funny or incredibly moving things in the moment. That's when we do our best work all of us. So we would always devise a broad trajectory for the whole thing. If we're making a specialist expensive.

So we can't just go to Mongolia and see if some stuff happens. You've got to set something up. But you know, that's a minimum you're going to come back with. And you know the best bits will be the unplant bits of course.

Was there a moment in the journey of top gear where you thought you're so fucking? What? This is, this is big. Oh, surprise moment.

Day one, studio one, series one, standing in dunce for halt. So this is 2002, very early on, maybe 2001. We filmed it a long time ago. Standing on the stage.

And you know, I'd always watch top gear because I loved cars. And I'd watch Jeremy on it. It was older than me and he was already doing it. And so as we were, it was recording one, they played in the top gear theme.

And my Instagram response from inside was, oh, top gear's on brilliant. Oh, I want it. A bit of concentrate. Yeah, there were key moments once when we were driving three cut price supercars that we'd bought.

And we pulled into a petrol station. So this is early days. And everybody came out running to see us and talk about the cars. And they said, oh, what are you boys doing?

What are you up to now? And that's when we realized, oh, hang on, we've created something here. It's got a momentum of its own, which is great. And it really did have a momentum.

So globally. No idea why. Honestly, none of us have. None of us have.

It was just made the best show. We could have next thing. We know we're walking out in front of 30,000 people on stage in South Africa or Sydney or Hong Kong or around the world doing the live stages with people that loved the show and we left. Why?

We went out in front of 60,000 people in the Polish National Stadium in Warsaw. And just before we went out on stage, I was in the lads back stage and we have those ear pieces and microphones so you can only hear each other. That was too much noise. And there's music playing.

We're about to all drive out with some terrible stunts. I usually hadn't listened to the briefings so there'd be a crash. And just before when I was at lads, three guys with less talent ever gone out in front of more people. No, there's ever happened.

It was just a serendipitous lining up of a need for a slightly narcic approach. I don't know. It was just a time. When we fitted.

Someone asked me on an interview, I did an earlier on in the magazine, they said, is there any guilt associated with your success? And it's quite a curious question. And it sent me to whatever silence, guilt. How does that question sit with you?

Is there any guilt? Same thing. Yeah, there is. It's guilt is slightly more refined.

That's almost why me. It's what? Yeah, because I'm still the little Birmingham lad that being a photographer wasn't for me. That's where other people are counting that.

I can't actually be a photographer for real in the big world. If somebody had said I could run various businesses and be a television presenter, no, don't be dark. That's not guilt. It's been conscious of being the beneficiary of a great deal of luck.

When I was younger, I went through a phase of luck. Yeah, but I was like, luck off to the lands at two in the morning and you're the only one still in the radio station editing set. No, it's just luck. It really is.

Because I've got people who started the same year as me, 88. And I got all the luck. I took some serendipitous decisions. I took some risky decisions and I stepped away from an over job with a company car back into broadcasting, took a massive pay car, took a massive pay hit when I joined Top Gear.

They were risks. But they're only risk if they're freely made, given that they were the product of whatever it was in me that was driving me to do what I was doing. It was already going to happen. So I'm lucky because not only did that opportunity come along, but earlier in my life, something had happened and equipped me with a need to gain whatever it was.

I stood a chance of gaining from taking that risk. So I took that risk. So it's still luck. It's still luck.

Somebody else could have had that same opportunity, but they hadn't been lucky enough on top of that to have been given that extra impetus to pursue it and take that risk by something that happened earlier in their lives. So it's luck. And it's just been very lucky. That's a strange feeling though, isn't it?

Do you think that you've got to live this life because of a set of factors that you're born in a certain place in a certain way and then that creative impetus you describe and then the dominoes, that fella decisions you chose to make because of all of those subsequent experiences lands you with this incredible job, with an incredible level of freedom. It's quite, can be quite, as you say, a why me feeling it? Yeah. Is it guilt?

It kind of as it tastes slightly differently, but it is sort of embarrassment. Is it slightly embarrassing? Is that why having, oh, accidentally stepped into so many luck traps? I'm now, you know, running my businesses.

And because that's something I feel I can say, no, I did that. That wasn't just like I made that happen by consciously taking decisions by thinking about it. Maybe. But then I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to do that, which I would never have had.

So it's all the whole experiment of my life has been skewed entirely by those key elements of luck at those key stages. But we will have to, we're lucky to be alive. And it's easy to say that and it sounds trite and nonsensical. But we are.

And for each one of us to experience our own individual perception of the universe, to live this experience is so phenomenally lucky. So many millions and billions of things have to not just have happened, but continue happening for that to be possible that whether or not was experiencing this miracle of self-awareness in and of the universe, we also get to go on the telly, driving about in a car or not. It's kind of irrelevant at the end. This, having this conversation, being aware of having loved ones, being aware of yourself in the world, being aware of the world, all of that.

That's the amazing stuff. The rest is just stuff. And that's easy to say for me because I'm not that worried about my next phone bill. It's a lot harder if you are.

I get that. And I'm not failing to be aware of that. And right now for a lot of people, whether or not they get to do a job on TV driving around in cars or whether or not they get to look at the universe and talk about the idea of God and love existing or not with their mates, it's kind of less important than they've just had to have a prepaid meter fitted for their gas. So the answer to that, guilt, embarrassment, I think, carry with you, maybe learn from it, look up from occasion and think how can I, what can I, can I make me better able to connect with people?

That just that would be useful. What's your opinion of yourself? You know, when you, this is a really interesting question, but you said something which kind of brought me to this question about this idea that maybe the building these businesses that you have now is another pursuit of like proving one is worthy, I guess, because of. I always want to prove I'm not a lucky idiot.

So what does that say? That's why I said what's your opinion of yourself? Oh, it's probably, I guess for that reason it's probably just a reveal. It's probably quite low, isn't it?

I'm very conscious of being very lucky, I think, to describe myself. What's the voice in Richard's head saying Richard is, who is, what is? It's like to be more fair about life. That troubles me, I think, fairness and I'm aware it's desperately unfair.

But also, yeah, as with a lot of some fairly anxious inside, need to be loved, same desperately. Need to be reassured. And one of the dangers, and I should imagine you'll find this given that you're young and enjoying a stellar career in what our archetypal positions of power and authority. So it's very likely that the world will look at you and think, well, he's the last one that needs a bit of reassurance and check on the shoulder and someone to say, oh, you're doing really well, well done.

Well, it's actually, you do. And I certainly find that, that's something that I need. I need someone to acknowledge that things are going well and you're taking advantage of whatever luck comes your way in. You know, I love building my businesses up because I love the fact that I'm conscious.

That's how the people's jobs. This is their story I'm helping build. If they get working with me at 24, even if they don't work with me for five years, when they'll remember that forever, like I remember the first radio stations I worked at, this is their history. We're taking a part in writing.

So I'm conscious of that. And sometimes you just need someone to roughly hear and go, well done. And that'd be nice. Yeah.

I'm asking to rough my head. It's like you're, yeah. I guess it's quite curious because someone would, someone looking in my think, well, you know, Richard's done so much in his life. He must just be absolutely satisfied and he must be completely complete and like there's nothing more else to prove or to, but the business point you made sounds like you feel like you have something to prove there.

Yeah. And I'm 53. I've got another go around in here. I'd like to have.

See, I don't know when you're thinking about time off. If you've ever got time off coming up, which I shouldn't imagine is very often and I don't know it isn't for me either. But when it is, I always think, yeah, God, I'd love to just take a week and wake up every day and just go for a run and then maybe run on motorcycle and just really, really revel in that. I'm immediately addicted to work.

But that's hardly surprising given that workers also been self verification and it's the reward that I probably shouldn't have had. So obviously I'm addicted to that. There's a constant value. Yeah.

Yeah, if you're not careful. Of course. Your relationships. You know, my two daughters.

I've made excuses over the years, often I'm sitting in a rainforest filming and to be a camera operator and maybe it's a bloke and he's just, that his first children and he's away from home and he's upset. And I've said, yeah, but you've got to remember, you know, you're the first example of how to lead a life. You can see where this is going. And, you know, you're going to come back with amazing stories and they're going to look and think, wow, if he can pursue his dreams and do that, I can pursue mine.

And you'll inspire them. Yeah. But they also just would quite like it to be around. That's a fact.

Yeah. I've been able to provide well for my girls, Izzy and Willa. I wish I'd been there more, of course I do. But if I'd been there more, we wouldn't have been where we were.

I can, our life would be so different because I've worked sort of in and out of London for 25 years. And we've lived deliberately out of London. They've been raised in Herifordshire. That's their county.

That's where they belong. My eldest are bumped into her in London. This week she popped into the flat. And she'd just been out in a pub in Fulham and pretty much everybody in there was from her county, Herifordshire.

She knew them all. And that's important. She can drift around London and know people or she can drift around her home county and the same for Willa. And that's important.

But then they've got a bigger view of the world. But they still have a home to go to and always shall have. Have you ever pondered that you might? Because I'm a work colleague.

No, no, no, no. Yeah, well, basically I'm definitely addicted to work. And sometimes, just still the pursuit of building and creating things and success. And I sometimes ponder in certain moments that just catch me that this isn't what it's all about.

And that I'm missing the point. I'm being dragged by a need for validation. Whereas I'm going to get to my death bed and be laying there and go, I just wish I'd just gone and hang out on a mountain with my partner in Peru a little bit more. From my kids and my dog.