Richard Hammond “nagged” back to consciousness

Top Gear presenter and former MCN columnist Richard Hammond believes he was brought back to consciousness by his wife’s nagging.

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Mindy Hammond, 42 shouted at him as if he had returned home drunk and fallen asleep on the sofa. She said: “I asked the nurse if I could shout at him and she said I could do anything, so I did.

“The way he remember it is that he was taking an easy route that he knew he shouldn’t have been taking. Then he thought I was cross, so he made the effort to come back.”

Richard Hammond suffered serious injuries in September 2006 when a jet-powered Vampire dragster car he was driving suffered a tyre blowout at 288mph. He was airlifted to hospital in Leeds, where doctors feared the worst.