Richard Hammond has revealed he will address his divorce from wife Mindy Etheridge on his new TV show.
The former Top Gear host, 55, and journalist Etheridge, 60, announced in January that they had split after an “amazing 28 years together”.
Hammond has now explained that he will discuss their break-up at the start of the new series of his Discovery Plus show, Richard Hammond’s Workshop.
During his appearance on Good Morning Britain on Monday, host Susanna Reid said: “Now you start the series with a sort of statement about your own story over the past year don’t you?”
“Yeah, well we wanted to get that out of the way and done because I got divorced this year,” Hammond replied.
“So at the beginning we said ‘so there’s been a few changes to the workshop and a little bit of a change to my situation’ and then we move on from that very quickly.”
The exes said in a statement earlier this year: “Our marriage is coming to an end, but we’ve had an amazing 28 years together and two incredible daughters.
“We will always be in each other’s lives and are proud of the family we created.”
Discussing their split last month, Hammond told the Daily Mail: “I’m 55. Things change. That’s what happens at this age. Big things change.”
Insiders suggested it was Etheridge who chose to call time on the relationship, though Hammond said: “In terms of that particular issue that’s a decision we took, as we said at the time. We put out a statement and it still stands.”
Elsewhere in the GMB interview, Hammond said Top Gear - which he left in 2015 alongside Jeremy Clarkson and James May - “has to come back”.
“I have absolutely no power over it whatsoever, but yes of course it will [come back],” he told Reid and her co-host Ed Balls.
“The show’s 40-odd years old, we were temporary custodians of it, it went through other iterations. It’s off air at the moment, it’s been off-air and come back before.”
Hammond said the current climate around transport and electric cars means there has “never been a more exciting time to talk about the subject”.
He also shared his sympathy over the “hurt” Top Gear presenter Freddie Flintoff faced when he suffered a high-speed crash in 2022, prompting a hiatus for the BBC show.
“Part of me did think, ‘Oh no, not again,’ and also I felt for Freddie, I’ve been there, I’ve been publicly injured and the process of recovery is long,” he said.
“I only wish Freddie all the best, it will be an ongoing recovery.”
Hammond suffered his own crash in 2006 while filming Top Gear that left him in a two-week coma with serious brain injuries.
