Richard Hammond had a ‘really vivid’ coma dream after his Top Gear crash, which he said took him to a ‘happy place’.
It was 17-years-ago when Hammond crashed a jet-powered dragster while driving almost 320mph at the RAF Elvington airbase in York.
Thankfully, he made a miraculous recovery and managed to return to Top Gear in 2007, though not without being in a coma in hospital for two weeks.
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During that time, he experienced a strange dream that he can still remember to this day.
In a video posted by DriveTribe – founded by Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May – on TikTok last year, Hammond talked (and walked) us through that dream while hiking in the Lake District on hills overlooking Buttermere.
"In my mind I'd been walking these hills here in the Lake District,” he said.
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“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? When you’re a teenager staying out just that bit too late – you’re not definitely in massive trouble yet, but you’re in a bit of trouble.
“And that feeling grew and grew, and I walked up this slope where I am now towards this tree, this exact tree.
"And as I got closer and closer that sense of, ‘Ooo, I really am in trouble, I'm going to be shouted at, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble' grew and grew until eventually, in my dream.
“I turned back, I didn't walk round this tree and carry on – and I woke.”
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He woke up and told his wife Mindy about what he’d dreamt about.
It turned out that he really was in trouble, as she’d been shouting at him telling him not to die.
"Mindy told me her side of the story, because at the same time she had been called into the intensive care unit and told that things were not looking good,” Hammond continued.
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“I was on full life support and breathing support, the lot, and they said, 'It's not looking good, we think we're going to lose him'."
When his wife asked if there was anything she could do to save him, she asked to shout at him.
"And she did," Hammond said.
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"And apparently she roared and screamed and swore at me, 'don't you dare die', and that's when I turned from this tree in my dream and that's when I woke."
Speaking to the BBC about the now-viral video, Hammond said Mindy’s shouting had corresponded with that turning point in his dream.
“My brain chose to conjure up an image of my absolute favourite place in the world – my favourite activity, which is just going for a nice, simple walk,” he said, adding: “That’s all my brain wanted to create for me.”
Hammond said he chose to tell his story about the dream because ‘it’s not often you get to be really personal and share quite an intimate story’.
“I hoped it would connect with people […] Because it’s about acquired brain injury, that affects a lot of people,” he explained.
Topics: Celebrity, Richard Hammond, Top Gear
Jess Hardiman