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 (pictured during their last public appearance together in February 2024)
The Top Gear presenter took to X to share the news in a joint statement, sharing that they will ‘always be in each other’s lives’
‘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.’
Mindy and Richard bought the grade II listed Bollitree Castle in 2008, and the estate boasts six bedrooms, a swimming pool and 20 acres of land.
It’s thought that the couple’s daughter Izzy still lives on the estate.
Their daughter Izzy, 24, still lives at the estate near Ross-on-Wye and works alongside her dad at his garage and filming podcasts.
The couple’s other daughter Willow, 22, reportedly lives separately in a rented home in Gloucestershire.
Richard married Mindy in 2002 after they first met back in 1995, with the presenter previously sharing that their was an instant attraction between them.
The couple married in 2002, and they share daughters Isabella, 24, and Willow, 22
It’s thought that newspaper columnist Mindy has asked to keep the £7million Bollitree Castle estate as part of their split settlement
Richard married Mindy in 2002 after they first met back in 1995, with the presenter previously sharing that their was an instant attraction between them (pictured in 2006)
Writing in his book On The Edge: My Story, he said: ‘In an instant, I fell in love with her and realised I had met my soul-mate and best friend for life.’
In 2017, Mindy publicly warned her husband he will have to quit TV if he crashes his car badly again – after he was involved in a second high speed crash.
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.
In 2006 he also 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: ‘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.
Richard nearly lost his life when he was involved in a 320mph crash while filming a Top Gear stunt at York’s Elvington airfield back in 2006
Her husband explained that after the call she ‘kept shopping’.
The star required reconstructive surgery on his fractured left knee having escaped the wreckage just seconds before it went up in flames.
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.
Richard also recently raised fears that his injuries might have caused onset dementia.
Talking on The Diary of a CEO podcast, he said: ‘I worry about my memory because it’s not brilliant. I can still read a script and deliver it but my long-term memory is not brilliant.
‘I have to write things down and work hard to remember them sometimes. It might be the age, it might be the onset of something else, I worry about that. I do, I do. I should probably have a look and find out, because I do.’
He endured a second brush with death after his £2 million Rimac supercar careered off a hill and burst into flames as he raced at high speed through rural Switzerland in 2017
Mindy previously warned Richard that he was on his ‘last chance’ in 2017 after he was involved in the second high-speed crash
Host Steven Bartlett asked him: ‘Are you scared of finding out?’
He said: ‘I am because it was a bleed on the front. It could mean there is an increased risk. I need to find out. I’ve been too scared to do it. I need to do it.
‘Weirdly on the way here, I had to stop off for a medical for a production. They ask “Have you been involved in any accidents?” I’m like “Woooah! Can I have another piece of paper please?”
‘I need to book myself in for one of those mid-life MOTs and check everything. I wanted to ask them to check there is nothing going awry up here [pointing to his head]. But I chickened out. Didn’t.
‘That means I probably need an MRI scan but at 53, your memory does start to get a bit… they call it lost key syndrome.
‘I am quite forgetful, generally thinking about something else, the next thing and therefore I do drop the ball, I forget stuff a lot. That’s just me. That’s who I am.’
After the crash, which saw his Vampire jet car lose control and flip upside down after a tyre burst, he admitted to suffering from depression.
He said: ‘I have no recollection because there was the frontal lobe bleed. I was just decelerating upside down, using my head as a brake, which isn’t good for you.’
He added: ‘Mindy [his wife], was told by the doctors that a frontal brain lobe injury would possibly lead to me having a greater propensity for obsessive compulsion and depression and paranoia.
‘Mindy was like, “You didn’t meet him before the crash, did you?” which is quite funny to be fair. I think I did suffer a bit, I suffered all of those things to a degree.
‘Some of them were really weird moments and I still get an echo of it.
‘I remember having been institutionalized for a really long time in hospitals and in recovery… I would be coming into London to do something.
‘I would open the wardrobe door and just look at all the shirts and just trying to work out.. it was too much. I found choice really difficult for quite a long time.’
He continued: ‘Feeling your emotions derailed or interfered with because of a neurochemical imbalance, it’s just chemicals and electricity.
‘I was walking across the drive of my house and I felt this sudden welling, this surge of love in my chest and I thought, what’s that?
‘Eventually I identified it, I had walked past my old Land Rover, which I do love but only because I quite like it, but it had just triggered this absolutely… I thought blimey, it made me think.
‘If emotions can be that profoundly affected by what was just a mix-up up of chemicals and electricity in my head, then I am more aware of things.
‘Now, I don’t listen to my emotions too closely if I am very very tired or if I have had a big night out with the boys the night before.
‘If I have drink red wine the I do not tune it to see what I think about anything. It’s irrelevant for a day. Those are the rules.
‘I was angry for a while, Anger is a problem when recovering from a brain injury. I wanted a T-shirt that said on the front, “I am OK, stop asking” and on the back, “I am still poorly, you know”.’