Richard Hammond’s daughter Izzy has candidly labelled her dad an ‘idiot’ while reflecting on his perilous career and the numerous high-speed crashes he’s been involved in over the years. .
The 24 year old content creator opened up about her mother Mindy’s ‘frustrations’, revealing that her Sollihull-born father was often absent during her childhood due to his commitments filming Top Gear and The Grand Tour.
The 55 year old Top Gear star confirmed the end of his 28-year marriage on Thursday, with reports already suggesting that Mindy, 59, is keen to retain their Herefordshire castle in the upcoming divorce proceedings.
During an appearance on Ben Fowler’s podcast Road To Success, just days before the announcement of her parents’ separation, Izzy was asked: “Would you call your dad a daredevil or an idiot?”
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The passionate car enthusiast responded: “We’ve done handbrake turns around roundabouts, sorry I know that’s incredibly illegal you might have to cut that out. He’s an idiot’. “He has that thing that racing drivers have where they just don’t have the fear. Everyone has that line where it’s like “okay I know where the line is”, he just doesn’t have that.
He really genuinely would just go and go and go. “In 2006, the TV presenter suffered life-threatening head injuries and was placed in a coma following a high-speed crash while filming for the popular BBC show. Then, in 2017, Mindy publicly warned her husband that he would have to quit TV if he was involved in another serious car crash.
Discussing how her father wasn’t always present for her and her sister due to his work commitments, Izzy shared: Speaking about her father, Willow, 22, said: “I always think it must be frustrating for my mum because probably some of my happiest memories are ironically with my dad because he wasn’t there that much because he was filming.
“He wasn’t there a lot and that’s all I really knew growing up.”
She went on to explain that his work trips often meant he was away for over a month, adding: “I mean I’m not this is sounding like I had some awful childhood, I really didn’t at all.”
I think my parents were really good at navigating because they had no idea what was going to happen.
“But they were very good at sort of drip feeding information so we’d know a bit what he was doing but not enough to worry us because most of the time they were doing stupid stuff that we really shouldn’t know about.”
Mindy previously revealed she had warned Richard about his reckless behaviour, telling him: “I did say three strikes and you’re out. You’ve had two goes.”