Top Gear’s Chris Harris Attacked With Hammer While Motorbike Was Being Stolen
In a recent interview with Jonny Smith on the Late Brake Show, Chris Harris of Top Gear gave Jonny the run-through of what happened when he was attacked with a hammer when he fought off a group of thugs trying to steal his motorbike while working on Top Gear alongside Matt LeBlanc.
The story comes as Harris invites Smith to sit in his Peugeot 205 Rallye. He explains how while buying the iconic car over the phone from a dealership in France while walking up a road in Soho, he spotted a gang of riders stealing a Ducati motorbike.
He says, “I remember thinking, ‘that’s a nice Ducati, it’s another Anniversary, oh that’s mine!’
“So I ran towards them, and shouted ‘stop that’. What they do is angle grind the steering lock away, and there was another guy on a bike.
“He had a BMW GS who was pushing it.”
He continues to explain the event as Jonny just shows a face of shock.
“So I ran in front of the bike thinking that was a good thing to do, looking back it’s not the best thing I could have done.
“The guy on my bike, I tried to wrestle him and get the bike away from him, and he tried to wrestle me back.
“The Ducatti fell over as we were tussling and shamed all the wing mirrors and everything off the side and hit the clutch casing which was really ugly, and I thought they’d run away.
“No no no no, the guy that was on my bike tried to fight me but he wasn’t very big, I’m not very big, but he wasn’t very strong. And the guy on the GS but it on a stand and came after me with a hammer!”
“What!” Jonny replied.
Harris continued to explain how despite there being about twenty other people watching, no one came to help, and the thugs eventually did a runner. On bringing his bike back to the office where he was working on Top Gear, LeBlanc spotted the damage.
“Matt comes out and goes, ‘yeah you should have had some of those Ducatti performance levers, those are too long those ones’, then just walks back inside again with a grin on his face.”
Smith looks at him in disbelief as Harris finishes simply, “that was a weird day.”
