Richard Hammond reveals his wife Mindy’s screams saved him from near-death coma

Richard Hammond has revealed how his wife saved his life by screaming into his ear when he was in a coma on the verge of dying after his horrific car accident in 2006.

The former Top Gear presenter, 52, spoke of being seconds away from death after doctors said he wouldn’t make it – before miraculously surviving the ordeal.

In 2006, the presenter suffered a brain injury in a 288 mph car crash while filming for Top Gear.

Richard, speaking in a TikTok video, sat under a tree in the Lake District as he remembered what could have been his last moment.

He shared how he found strength in his mind to regain consciousness while dreaming about the breathtaking area of ​​the UK.

‘In the hospital, in the intensive care unit, things apparently didn’t look good, but I didn’t know. I had a lot of morphine floating through my system,” he said.

“I finally woke up and shared with my wife Mindy a dream I had been having. A very, very lively one – probably, in part, based on the morphine.

‘And in my mind I walked over these hills here in the Lake District, overlooking Buttermere. I had a lovely time strolling by and gradually I got a growing sense of – you know when you know you’re in trouble? That feeling grew and grew.’

As Richard continued up the slope, toward a particular tree, the sense of trouble grew stronger.

He recalled, “It grew and grew until finally I turned around in my dream… and then I woke up.”

After Richard told his wife Mindy about his dream, she told him what happened in the hospital room at the same time.

He explained, “She was called into intensive care and said to ‘Mrs Hammond, I’m really sorry.’ It doesn’t look good… we’re going to lose him.”

When told there was nothing she could do to help, Mindy asked if she could yell at him.

And she did. And apparently she was roaring and screaming and cursing at me ‘don’t you dare die’. And then in my dream I returned from this tree. And then I woke up.’

He added: ‘My last thought took me somewhere I love and somewhere I’m happy.

“And that last thought, if I had closed off and stopped, would have reverberated for eternity as far as I’m concerned. And I’ve taken immense comfort from it ever since.

‘I’m not afraid of this old tree. I pass by it regularly… every time I walk past it I feel comforted. I know I’m going there.’

Richard was in a coma for two weeks in September 2006 after the jet-powered Vampire car he was driving to Top Gear at 450 km/h suffered a blowout during a land speed record attempt.

He suffered a serious head injury and was hospitalized for five weeks before returning home to his wife Mindy and their two daughters, Isabella and Willow.

Despite the horrific crash, the presenter emerged remarkably unscathed.

However, his left eye was badly bruised, which Hammond described as a “Klingon eye, all lumpy and full of fluid.”

The TV presenter later spoke of how he “struggled mortally with depression” and spoke regularly to a psychiatrist following the incident.

He previously recalled in an interview with The Mirror: ‘I was upside down breathing in a field. My nose and eyes were full of dirt. I had started plowing on my head. My very last thought was “Oh you bastard, that’s gone wrong”.

“Well, we’re checking out now. You’ve had it’. I was aware that my brain was saying, “We’ll wave the flag” – and that was the point where I passed out”.

‘Doctors use a points system. Fifteen is normal, three is flatline. I was a three. I was so close to death.’

Hammond was on his last run of the day when the crash happened.

The presenter said he was in ‘bad’ shape when the air ambulance arrived. Richard remembered that before he knew it he was in Leeds hospital.

Initially, doctors predicted a 15-month hospital stay at a private clinic in Bristol, but he returned home after five weeks.

Richard suffered from his mental health in the aftermath. He described how the trauma left him feeling “panicked, desperate and like crazy.”

In 2017, Richard was airlifted to hospital again after flipping a £2 million electric supercar, which then burst into flames while filming his new Amazon show The Grand Tour.

But he miraculously escaped the fireball horror with little more than a broken knee and was “conscious and talking” after freeing himself from the vehicle.

His Grand Tour colleagues May and Clarkson were “amazed” that he survived because there was “nothing left” of the vehicle. Grand Tour producer Amazon later released footage showing the burnt-out wreckage of the car lying upside down on a hill.