Richard Hammond On Taking A Break From The Grand Tour: “I Can Come Back Home”

Richard Hammond has spoken about his latest business venture, The Smallest Cog workshop, and that he feels very lucky to be able to work close to home.

Hammond has been on our screens since 2002 when he joined Jeremy Clarkson and Jason Dawe to present Top Gear, Dawe later being replaced by James May. The trio then moved over to Prime Video for The Grand Tour after Clarkson’s dramatic exit from the BBC in 2015.

For both Top Gear and The Grand Tour, the trio have travelled all over the world to some incredible places. Some of these have included Iraq, Madagascar, and the Magnetic North Pole. Their latest expedition was to Norway for The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick. Viewers saw Clarkson, Hammond, and May racing around a snowy Norway in their choice of rally-inspired cars.

Now that The Grand Tour is roughly two special episodes a year, the presenters have been able to branch out more and do their own thing. Clarkson has the Diddly Squat Farm, as seen on Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm, he hosts Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and still writes his columns or The Sunday Times and The Sun. May has his travel show which has had two series so far, James May: Our Man In Japan and Our Man In Italy. And Hammond has just released the second series of Richard Hammond’s Workshop.

When speaking to The Express, Hammond spoke about the second series and that it is nice to be working closer to home in Herefordshire. He said:

“I mean, for all these years I’ve been travelling the world it’s been incredible. I’m not moaning about it, I’ve been a very, very lucky boy. I mean, ridiculously lucky.

“And I’m appreciative of that, but it has meant a lot of time away from home. It’s lovely to do something that my wife Mindy and my daughters, Izzie and Willow. It’s part of our family life. I do this work, I start from home and I go to the workshop and I come back home.

“I don’t get on an aeroplane. And it’s great for them to see that. Yeah, I’m loving [it] and it’s also in the county where we live. So the people that we see are the people I live amongst, which is great.”

Reflecting on his time on Top Gear and The Grand Tour with Clarkson and May, Hammond continued:

“Those guys, we’ve worked together 20 odd years. It’s a long time. And so yeah, it’s lovely. When we get on set and the director calls action, it’s like we step into a world we’ve never been out of.

“Like it exists out there all the time with us three being idiots and meeting somewhere in cars, so it’s always a joy to get back together and that’ll never change. We’re very lucky to get to do what we’ve done.”

Hammond added:

“Any TV show where you see that genuine rapport amongst mates – and you know everybody has a circle of people that they know – and you reach that point where you know roughly how they’ll react if you say something.

“And I know that with Jeremy and James, and I know that with Neil, Anthony and Andrew [Greenhouse] because we’ve known each other for years.

“So I know if I’m talking to Jeremy and James and I said say something about motorbikes, I know Jeremy will fire up, I know where the conversation would go.”

The workshop is unlike anything Hammond has done before, he went on to explain that fans are seeing a much “real” him. He said:

“It’s much more the real me because when I’m doing other TV shows, it’s a different experience,”

“It’s a different world really. But this is me in my real world, following my own real passion and exposed for all my many weaknesses!”