‘No one’s ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand,’ the TV presenter said (Picture: PA/Getty)
Former Top Gear star Chris Harris has revealed that months before Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s horrific crash on the BBC series, he warned the broadcaster that ‘someone’s going to die on this show’ unless changes were made.
In December 2022, former professional cricket player Flintoff was involved in a devastating accident at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey, which had been the test track used by the show since 2002.
After having to wait 45 minutes for a helicopter to arrive at the scene, Flintoff was airlifted to hospital and suffered multiple facial injuries and broken ribs.
It was said that the now-46-year-old was ‘lucky to be alive’.
In a new interview, Harris, who presented Top Gear alongside Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness before the programme was ‘rested’, explained that he had ‘seen this coming’.
Speaking on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, the 49-year-old said: ‘The bit that I find really difficult was in the aftermath of that accident, the show was put on hold, Andrew had to recover from frankly awful injuries, and has done so, profound injuries.
Harris (centre) presented Top Gear from 2016, with McGuinness and Flintoff joining him from 2019 to 2022 (Picture: PA/Lee Brimble)
‘We all kept quiet, we said nothing. I said nothing because I wanted to look after him. It wasn’t my story, was it? I was caught up in the collateral damage, I lost my job immediately because they cancelled the show and my contract was up. So suddenly I haven’t got a job.
‘But again you look in the mirror and think I’m alive, I’ve got three beautiful children, I’m not in Fred’s position. Andrew and Fred are the same person, sorry – that’s his nickname. And I just sort of got my head down. But I had seen this coming.’
Harris, who is an automotive journalist and a professional racing driver, explained to Rogan that ‘there was a big inquiry’ and ‘a lot of soul searching’, adding: ‘The BBC’s good at that.’
He continued: ‘But what was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I’d gone to the BBC and said, “Unless you change something, someone’s going to die on this show.” So I went to them, I went to the BBC and I told them of my concerns from what I’d seen as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile.
‘I said if we carry on at the very least we’re going to have a serious injury at the very worst we’re going to have fatality.’
Flintoff recently returned to TV with his series Field of Dreams (Picture: BBC/South Shore Productions/Anirudh Agarwal)
Harris outlined that he himself is not a risk-averse person, sharing that he enjoys risk.
He also stated that in his opinion, if people sign up to do a show like Top Gear, they understand that they’re entering into an environment that carries risk.
However, the ‘critical thing’ that happened on …read more
Source:: Metro
