On the Edge - Richard Hammond

Weidenfiled & Nicolson
isbn 13 978 0 85327 5

When a national TV star has a serious accident in the course of his work it is BIG news. That is how things are these days. The viewer builds up some sort of relationship with the person on the small(ish) screen. So Richard's jet car accident was a big deal. The newspapers and the TV and radio news not only reported his crash, but also to some extent his recovery. This book is Richards record, for public consumption, of that whole process.

I started reading this on our quiet weekend, and got a fair way through. It starts with Richard's childhood and gives you some idea why he turned out like he did, his family life, and how he ended up on 'Top Gear'. This is all very interesting stuff as autobiographies go, but it isn't the main point of his book. The point is the recovery from the accident. It was just another mad day of filming. Richard describes the 'car' as he normally would. I could hear him as I read the words. The preparations for the run, the description of the simplicity of the controls. His evaluation of the vehicle and the driving experience. The description of the accident is brief. His thoughts during it are also recorded, but obviously from his memories - after the accident. He is used to observing and recording his impressions and playing them back for the viewer, and the accident is recorded in a similar way.

Immediately after the accident Mindy (his wife) takes over the narrative. It is through her descriptions of the aftermath that we get a real feeling for the impact that such an accident has on those around the victim. At first just the worry, the narrow focus on the person you think you may loose, and the overwhelming shock of it all. All this comes through really clearly.
The recovery process is more prolonged, this part takes about half the book. There are some lovely scenes that portray the madness of it all, they should be funny, but because we have got to know Richard somehow, they are not. The escape from the hospital, the military style operation to move the family to somewhere quiet so that the recovery can continue should be a point of high humour - but we care, so it isn't. Mindy's passages about the family, and particularly the children make for difficult reading. They are well written, but hard to read, hard to get through, especially if you have children of your own, I suspect.

Towards the end where Richard and Mindy are both writing, and it is possible to compare what they were doing by putting the passages next to each other, the font is changed so that we can easily tell who is who. That is helpful, but that part of the book is still the most confusing. It would have been better separated into chapters, and some explaining used to help the reader through. The constant switches from Richard to Mindy and back again just serves to break both stories.

It is a very readable book, from one of our best TV personalities, describing a difficult period in his life. Mindy's sections are perhaps the most important, and perhaps communicate the experience better than Richard's, but then she is on the outside, just as we are.