Ex-Top Gear producer says Richard Hammond crash was ‘real wake-up call’

Speaking at the Royal Television Society (RTS) London Conference, Willman, who produced the BBC motoring show from 2002 to 2015, said crashes had happened “too much now” and added it was “time to end” the show.

The Clarkson’s Farm producers said he and his team had done risk assessments but said they became annoyed when there was a “culture of accident prevention” rather than “mitigation”.

He said: “We have actually done all the risk assessments, what we get annoyed at is if there’s a culture of accident prevention, and we’re like, no, it’s mitigation.”You know, when one of them eventually crashes, have we got everything in place? If not, shall we not do something in case they crash? That was a point of difference for us.

“Done it too much now, so it’s one of those reasons that it’s time to end.

“Richard’s first big crash was a real wake-up call because I remember driving up and thinking, f*** me, it’s a TV show and I rang the hospital, and they went he’s in intensive care, and we don’t know if he’s going to make it.

“You’re like, we’ve done everything so you’re not thinking about who’s to blame or anything like that because everything was in place.

“But you just think he’s got a wife and two children, what are we doing? That fear was for him and the helplessness, obviously, because they won’t tell you anymore, on the part they don’t give you any detail.

“And you start (thinking) in traffic and you’re like panicking, and you’re thinking, what’s the point of what we do? What is the point?

“We did have a good chat afterwards, me and Jeremy, like, God should we be bothered with this?”

He went on to say that when he was working on Top Gear, he and the team had wanted to make their office “a bit horrible” so they would be “left alone from execs”.

Wilman added: “I think we used to make the place a bit horrible because I wanted to be left alone from execs.

“We didn’t want notes, we didn’t want anything like that, so we made it like a sort of Chernobyl with people that should have been in it, and then we were like, ok, nobody will come here, and then we can get on with our stuff.

“Luckily, it was good stuff.”

He also spoke about his working relationship with Jeremy Clarkson, who he said he had enjoyed a “synergy” with since school.

The Grand Tour producer said the pair’s relationship had created an “organic development” through the shows they had worked on together.

Wilman said: “I went to school with him, but we didn’t plan any of this when we were at school.

“But the working together that we have done, we do have a synergy, I think some of that did come from school, there’s no denying that.

“Because one of the threads that has shot through our stuff is there has been an organic development of each show.”

The producer’s comments come after TV presenter and former England cricketer Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff, 46, was badly hurt in an accident while filming Top Gear at Dunsfold Aerodrome in December 2022, which led to the show being rested for the “foreseeable future” by the BBC.

Following the crash, an independent health and safety production review of Top Gear was launched which found that “while BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practice in making the show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions”.