Richard Hammond reveals shock split from wife after 28 years together

Richard Hammond and his wife have announced their split after “28 amazing years together”.

The 55-year-old TV presenter, best known for his role on motoring Top Gear and The Grand Tour alongside former co-stars James May and Jeremy Clarkson, married the newspaper columnist Amanda “Mindy” Hammond in 2002.

In a statement shared online on Thursday, the pair said: “A little update from us; this Christmas we were together as a family and this year we will still be a family but just structured a bit differently.

“Our marriage is coming to end, but we’ve had an amazing 28 years together and two incredible daughters.”

“We will always be in each other’s lives and are proud of the family we created.

“We won’t be commenting further and sincerely hope that our privacy and that of our children will be respected at this time. With Love, Richard and Mindy.”

Amanda had been a pillar of support to Hammond as he dealt with the aftermath of his near-fatal 2006 Top Gear crash when he was injured while driving a jet-powered car at 288 mph. The incident briefly put him into a coma and left him with serious head injuries, but he managed to make a full recovery and returned to the show in early 2007.

Speaking about the incident 16 years later, Hammond admitted in 2022 that his wife screaming at him in the hospital is what woke him from the coma.

“In hospital, in intensive care, things were apparently not looking very good, but I didn’t know, there was a lot of morphine floating around my system,” he said in 2022. “I finally woke and I shared with my wife Mindy a dream I’d been having. A really, really, really vivid one, probably, partly, on account of the morphine.

“And in my mind I’d been walking these hills here in the Lake District, overlooking Buttermere. I was having a lovely time strolling along and gradually I got a growing sense of you know when you know you’re in trouble.”

“(It) grew and grew until eventually in my dream I turned back, I didn’t walk back around this tree and carry on and then I woke.”

After waking up and telling his wife about his dream, she told him that at the same time, she had been “shouting and screaming” at him, saying ,“Don’t you dare die!”

”That’s when I turned back from this tree in my dream and that’s when I woke,” said Hammond. “My last thought took me somewhere I love and somewhere I’m happy. So I’m not scared of this old tree. I pass it regularly, most months I come up here and walk, and every time I pass it, I do feel comforted.”

Hammond and his wife share two daughters, Izzy, 24, and Willow, 22.

The motor journalist hosts the podcast Who We Are Now with his daughter Izzy, who works alongside her dad at his garage.

Hammond found fame on local radio before landing a role on Top Gear in 2002, and went on to present The Grand Tour on Amazon. Hammond has also fronted gameshows Brainiac and Total Wipeout.