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Top Gear favourite Richard Hammond has enjoyed a career of fast cars and exotic travel which, at times, left his schedule full to the brim. However, his relationship with his two daughters has been impacted enormously by it, as he revealed in a very candid podcast interview.

“I’ve been able to provide well for my girls,” he mused, before adding wistfully, “but I wish I’d been there more – of course I do”.

“Life would be so different,” the Top Gear star exclaimed, pondering the fact that his two girls feel they “belong” in their home county of Hertfordshire, while he has constantly been posted in London or abroad.

“I am hideously addicted to work,” he continued, describing it as “self-verification”, and “the reward that I probably shouldn’t have had”.

“Is there a cost to that?” podcast host Steven Bartlett then quizzed.

“Yeah, if you’re not careful, your relationships,” Richard replied.

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He admitted he’d “made excuses” for his absences over the years, and has found himself comforting co-workers who had been separated from their families too.

“Often I’ll be sitting in the rainforest filming and there’ll be a camera operator – maybe it’s a bloke [who’s] just had his first children and he’s away from home and he’s upset,” James explained.

“I’ve said to them ‘You’ve got to remember you’re their first example of how to lead a life,'” he explained, while being interviewed on the popular podcast, Diary Of A CEO.

“They’re gonna look at you and be like ‘Wow – if he can pursue his dreams and do that, I can pursue mine’ and you’ll inspire them!” he insisted.

However, he also acknowledged that his daughters would have liked him to “just be around”.

Although he missed out on milestone moments with the two daughters he shares with wife Mindy – Willow and Isabella – he insists the “amazing stories” he came back with were his way to entertain them.

He added: “I never feel solid regret, ever – I just don’t feel it.”

That said, he did feel a moment of profound guilt as he experienced a serious car crash back in 2006 and faced his fears that he might not survive.

His first thought in the immediate aftermath of the crash, before losing consciousness, was for his daughters.

“I’ve nearly denied you a father for the rest of your life because I’ve done the wrong thing,” he lamented to himself, admitting that he felt intense guilt, but “no fear”.

It could all have ended in tragedy for the then-36-year-old, who catapulted forwards in a supercar while speeding along at 320mph.

The impact left him with a frontal lobe bleed on the brain after using his head “as a break”.

One of his first memories of regaining consciousness was of his wife standing over him, roaring: “Don’t you dare die!”

He relates to her anger, musing: “When all else has tried and failed, it’s a last resort – don’t you dare, because she wants me around. I think we’d all [shout] that – it’s not just a movie trope.”

Richard suffered post-traumatic amnesia for weeks after the accident and had a “one minute memory”, but recalled feeling totally content, admitting: “I was perfectly happy reading the same newspaper every day several times a day. [In the end], my wife took it away because she was sick of seeing me read it!”

He also felt a sense of inner peace when crashing, saying he was freed from being tied to his own biorhythms and was “no longer worrying about heartbeats”.

The full interview, in which the Top Gear star talks about ambitions, career highs and lows and using work as “validation”, is available here.

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