Richard Hammond has revealed he’s split from his wife Amanda, also known as Mindy, after 28 years together.
The Top Gear presenter, 55, took to X to share the news in a joint statement, sharing that they will ‘always be in each other’s lives.’
The couple, who married in 2002, share daughters Isabella, 24, and Willow, 22, and it’s thought that newspaper columnist Mindy has asked to keep the £7million Bollitree Castle estate as part of their split settlement.
In a statement on X, Richard said: ‘A little update from us; this Christmas we were together as a family and this year we will still be a family but just structured a bit differently.
‘Our marriage is coming to 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.
Richard Hammond has revealed he’s split from his wife Mindy after 28 years together
‘We won’t be commenting further and sincerely hope that our privacy and that of our children will be respected at this time. With Love, Richard and Mindy.’
A source went onto tell The Sun: ‘Richard is very upset about all this. It seems he has tried hard to rekindle the relationship but to no avail.
‘There is no speculation that any third party is involved.’
In 2017, Mindly publicly warned her husband he will have to quit TV if he crashes his car badly again – after he was involved in a high speed crash in 2006.
Richard was filming for the show in Switzerland when the car he was driving crashed and repeatedly flipped over before catching fire, moments after he managed to escape it.
Richard suffered life-threatening head injuries and was in a coma following a high-speed crash as he filmed for BBC’s Top Gear.
Mindy flew to be at her husband’s bedside after he careered off the Swiss hillside and said today: ‘I did say three strikes and you’re out. You’ve had two goes’.
His daughter Isabella who was behind the camera with younger sister Willow who told her dad: ‘Don’t crash again will you’.
Appearing together on ITV’s This Morning she added: ‘He has one of these every ten years so I’ve marked the next one in my diary’.
Mindy said she had predicted the crash after having a ‘funny’ feeling on the day before the crash.
She said: ‘I actually called Richard on the day before which I don’t usually do, ever.
‘Then the day of the accident I call him and he said he was fine but had a couple more runs to do.
‘Then there was a phone call and he said: “I’d had a bit of a shunt”. I did go quite a bit funny which I’ve never done before’.
Mindy was out buying shoes with her daughters when he called her to say he had been hurt.
Her husband explained that after the call she ‘kept shopping’.
She said: ‘You have to keep doing something keep through it’.
Thestar required reconstructive surgery on his fractured left knee having escaped the wreckage just seconds before it went up in flames on June 10.
His wife was quick to rib him about how he has been while recovering at home over the past month.
As Richard mouthed ‘brilliantly’ Mindy said: ‘I’ve got teenage daughters and a nine year old man’.
Richard has repeatedly apologised to his wife and two daughters for putting them through more trauma.
He said today that he believed he might die when his car flew off the mountain.
He said he knew it was ‘bad’, adding: When the car touched down it smashed the bottom bit of my knee’.
When he was in hospital he revealed: ‘They told me I’ve lost 7mm of height. I can’t be losing that’.
Holly Willoughby responded with: So are you uneven?’ and he said: ‘Yes. No, no, I can’t be running in circles for the rest of my life.’
When asked how co-stars Jeremy Clarkson and James May responded he joked: ‘They wept Apparently neither of them have slept and I get a lot of calls and texts from both of them.
‘They saw the contract going off the hill and were worried about all the legal work’.
The smash came more than a decade after Hammond’s previous horror crash in 2006 when he flipped a car travelling at 318mph while filming for Top Gear, leaving him in a two-week coma with life-threatening head injuries.
Hammond, who was driving up a hill in the Rimac Concept One electric car when he crashed last month, said previously: ‘It was the very last run of the day, at the top just over the finish line it got away from me and I went over the edge.’
He then hurtled 100 metres down a hill, narrowly avoiding crashing into a house and leaving craters in the cliffside.
He told DriveTribe: ‘I was very much aware at that point that it being a hillclimb and me being at the end of it, I would be at the top of the hill.
‘So what followed was getting down the hill very very quickly.
‘I was aware that I was up, that I was high, that inevitably the car was going to come down, and of course there was a moment of dread ‘Oh god, I’m going to die’.
‘Also I was aware that the car was taking just such a beating.’
He added: ‘What was probably going through my mind was ‘well this is it’. I thought ‘I’ve had it’.’
Hammond said he was conscious all the way through the crash, saying: ‘You’re aware of sky, ground, sky, ground, sky, ground’ and comparing it to ‘being in a tumble dryer full of bricks going down a hill’.
He was left with a knee injury from the crash, and said: ‘I do remember saying to drag me by my arms not my legs because I think I’ve broken that leg.’
However, the injury did not alarm his daughter Isabella, who told him: ‘Daddy it looks like you’ve fallen over in the playground,’ he said.
Hammond’s most recent incident ? which left his co-stars Jeremy Clarkson and James May fearing he had been killed ? came 11 years after he suffered life-threatening head injuries following a high-speed crash as he filmed for BBC’s Top Gear in 2006.
The presenter was in a coma for two weeks following the 288mph accident, but made a full recovery.
