[9] Presenting the afternoon programme at Radio Lancashire, his regular guests included motoring journalist Zog Ziegler, who would review a car of the week by being interviewed by Hammond over the phone.

[10] Following a high-speed dragster crash while filming in September 2006 near York, Hammond returned in the first episode of series 9 (broadcast on 28 January 2007) to a hero's welcome, complete with dancing girls, aeroplane-style stairs and fireworks.

The show also contained images of the crash, which had made international headlines, with Hammond talking through the events of the day after which the audience broke into spontaneous applause.

[14] On 12 June 2015, the BBC confirmed that Top Gear would return with a 75-minute special, combining two unseen challenges featuring all three presenters from series 22, with studio links from Hammond and May.

[20] Some accounts suggested that the accident occurred during an attempt to break the British land speed record,[15][21] but the Health and Safety Executive report on the crash found that a proposal to try to officially break the record was vetoed in advance by Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, due to the risks and complexities of such a venture.

"[17]: 1 Hammond was completing a seventh and final run to collect extra footage for the programme when his front-right tyre failed,[17]: 8 [22] and, according to witness and paramedic Dave Ogden, "one of the parachutes had deployed but it (the car) went on to the grass and spun over and over before coming to a rest about 100 yards from us.

"[17]: 13  The HSE notes that, based on the findings of the North Yorkshire Police (who investigated the crash), "the accident may not have been recoverable", even if Hammond's efforts to react were as fast as "humanly possible".

[17]: 13 Hammond made his first TV appearance since the crash on the BBC chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 22 December, just three months after the incident, where he revealed he was in a medically induced coma for two weeks and afterwards suffered from post-traumatic amnesia and a five-second memory.

[26][27] Despite saying he was "absolutely fixed" on the Jonathan Ross episode, in 2011, while talking to the Daily Mirror, Hammond admitted he had no memory of the interview, saying: "I lost a year.

I don't remember doing the interview with Jonathan Ross or doing Top Gear Live in South Africa" showing the full impact of his brain injury five years before.

[29][30] He also talked about his recovery in a 2010 television programme where he interviewed Sir Stirling Moss and they discussed the brain injuries they had both received as a result of car crashes.

He was also a team captain on the BBC Two quiz show, Petrolheads, in which a memorable part was one where Hammond was tricked into bumping his classic Ferrari while trying to parallel park blindfolded in another car.

[36] 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 16 March 2007.

After the network suffered three highly publicised outages in late 2009 and early 2010, Hammond became the butt of a joke when he did not return to New Zealand for Top Gear Live 2010.

One of Hammond's lesser known television roles was as presenter of the BBC Two gameshow Time Commanders, a sophisticated warfare simulator which used a modified version of Creative Assembly's Rome: Total War game engine.

[53] In June 2014, Hammond presented a scientific fourteen part series on National Geographic Channel titled Science of Stupid which focused on the application of physics in everyday life.

[56] In March 2017, whilst filming for The Grand Tour episode Feed the world in Mozambique, Hammond frequently fell off his motorbike due to the poor roads.

[citation needed] In January 2021, Hammond starred alongside MythBusters' Tory Belleci in The Great Escapists, a fictional six-episode adventure series for Amazon, which was produced by Chimp Productions.

[63] It was the biggest crash I've ever seen and the most frightening but incredibly, and thankfully, Richard seems to be mostly OK. Jeremy Clarkson and James May, fellow presenters on The Grand Tour, both witnessed the scene from afar; believing Hammond was dead, May recalled feeling a "blossoming, white-hot ball of pure, sickening horror forming in my heart",[65] and Clarkson described his "knees turning to jelly" at the sight of the crash.

[79] During the news segment of Top Gear's 2010 USA Road Trip special, Hammond openly expressed his dislike of the band Genesis.

In the 2013 Africa Special, Clarkson (BMW 528i Touring) once again played Genesis in an attempt to get Hammond (Subaru Impreza WRX Estate) to let him pass.

A week after the special was aired, Hammond announced during the news section that he had shipped Oliver back to the UK, where it was restored by a team from Practical Classics magazine.

[82] In September 2018, his wife reported that she and Richard, along with their fifteen-year-old daughter, had been burgled while sleeping at a holiday villa in Saint-Tropez, speculating that they might have been rendered unconscious by noxious gas.

[79] In an interview with The Sunday Times in February 2008, it was reported that Hammond had moved briefly from Gloucestershire to Buckinghamshire, then back again, because he missed the country life.

[152] On 29 September 2013, terminally-ill eight-year-old Emilia Palmer was driven by Hammond in a pink Lamborghini Aventador Roadster (newly repainted for the occasion).

Demanding an apology from the BBC, the ambassador stated: "These offensive, xenophobic and humiliating remarks only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate prejudice against Mexico and its people.

"[160] It has been speculated that the joke was written as a reference to a Kingis ice cream advert in Finland, where that episode of The Grand Tour was filmed.

[161] LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell who was unaware of the reference, accused Hammond of "pandering to prejudice", adding that "it's a perverse world when everyday pleasures like ice cream becomes the butt of homophobic innuendo.

"[162] A spokesperson for UK LGBT rights charity Stonewall stated that "Hammond's choice of words were not just ridiculous, but chosen purposefully to mock and belittle.

[164] In an interview with Newsweek Today, Hammond denied making homophobic comments, and refused to apologise for the remarks: "I entirely reject any criticism of me being anti-gay.