TV star Richard Hammond has shared the moving story how he dreamed of the Lake District in the depths of a coma.
The former Top Gear presenter has shared what he saw in his mind in hospital, when he became comatose following his 2006 near-fatal crash in a vampire jet car. It is the first time he has spoken about his two-week induced coma on camera.
The star was travelling at 288 miles an hour when the car’s front left tyre failed, launching him off the track, leaving him with brain damage to his frontal lobe.
He described his latest video, which has been posted to his YouTube channel What’s Next, in collaboration with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, as very personal and risky.
In the video, he said: “This is a story about places, about going places in your mind and I suppose, about the power of daydreams.”
The star went on to explain how when he awoke from his coma, he shared with his wife Mindy a vivid dream of the Lake District he’d had while unconscious. In the video Richard can be seen walking the fells in Buttermere, where he pauses to sit under a crooked tree.
He added: “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’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, that feeling grew and grew.
I walked up that slope to where I am now towards this exact tree and as I got closer and closer to that tree, that sense of oh, 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 around this tree and carry on and then I woke.”
The star said that when he talked about the dream with his wife, she told him her side of the story about how she’d been called into intensive care and told he was on the verge of death.
He said: “She was told ‘It’s not looking good, we think we are going to lose him’ and she said ‘Is there anything I can do?’ They said no, not really and then she said ‘Can I shout at him? Like really, really shout at him?’ And she did. Apparently she roared and screamed and swore at me and said don’t you dare die and that’s when I turned back from this tree in my dream.
“It’s true. I mean I didn’t really come up and walk around this tree, I was in a coma in Leeds, but my mind did and my mind is who I am and I know that very well having damaged it and recovering for a long time. I’ve taken huge solace from that ever since, because that was my last thought, certainly at the time.
He added that he felt immense comfort in his last thought taking him somewhere he loved and was happy and that he didn’t fear the tree in any way.
The star said: “I’m not scared of this old tree, I pass it regularly when most months at some point I’ll come up here and walk and every time I pass it, I do feel comforted and I know it’s where I’ll go. It’s still here and I’m still here, but it does speak of the importance of place and the joy of being connected with a place and I know this is very very genuinely where I am and where one day I will be, and that one day I will walk around this tree, and it’s nice to know where it is.”
