Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - PREPARING FOR THE NORTH POLE
Chapter 2 - THE EARLY YEARS OF AN ADRENALIN JUNKIE
Chapter 3 - FROM LOCAL RADIO TO TOP GEAR
Chapter 4 - WHAT A JOB!
Chapter 5 - THE JET CAR - JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE
Chapter 6 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2006
Chapter 7 - MINDY’S STORY
Chapter 8 - LEEDS GENERAL INFIRMARY
Chapter 9 - HE IS NOT GOING TO DIE
Chapter 10 - HELLO, DARLING
Chapter 11 - A WAITING GAME
Chapter 12 - THE MOVE TO BRISTOL
Chapter 13 - DID YOU KNOW SWANS MATE FOR LIFE?
Chapter 14 - ESCAPE TO SCOTLAND
Chapter 15 - THE COTTAGE IN THE HIGHLANDS
Chapter 16 - GOING HOME
Richard Hammond was born in Birmingham in 1969. After Solihull School he studied photography and television production at art college. He worked for various radio stations including York, Cumbria, Newcastle, Lancashire and Leeds before moving to television. After stints on Sky’s
On 20 September 2006, he was critically injured in a car crash while filming for
Mindy Hammond was born in Cheltenham and, when she wasn’t doing paper rounds to pay for her riding lessons, she went to the High School for Girls, Gloucester. Moving to London she worked in various offices, which paid for more riding lessons and fed the two big dogs with which she shared her small London flat. At night she wrote novels (still unpublished) and exercised too much. She met Richard in 1995 and together they moved to her home town, where she worked in graduate training. Following the birth of their two daughters she now divides her time between them, a menagerie of pets and livestock and managing Richard’s increasing workload.
On The Edge
RICHARD HAMMOND
Orion
A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook
A PHOENIX PAPERBACK
First published in Great Britain in 2007
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This paperback edition published in 2008
by Phoenix
an imprint of Orion Books Ltd,
Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette Livre UK company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Richard Hammond 2007
Photographs © Author’s Collection: pages 1-8 (all), 9 (bottom), 17 (all),
19 (bottom), 24 (top); BBC Motion Gallery: 14, 15 (all);
BBC Photo Library: 12 (top), 13 (top and the next three clockwise), 24