As You Do: Adventures With Evel, Oliver, and The Vice-President Of Botswana - Hardcover

[Hammond's] prose reveals him as a thoughtful, decent, generous-hearted man. He is capable of humility and his jokes are funny. As You Do is an unpretentious, well-built vehicle with pleasantly surprising extras and more speed and manoeuvrability than you would have thought. (EVENING STANDARD)

The wry, honest and often hilarious chronicles of a very brave and clever TV presenter, Arctic Explorer and general drawer of the Short Straw. Moving quickly on from the devastating crash that nearly killed him he ranges widely over his life and times: a visit to Glastonbury with James May reminds of him of his early years of playing in a band and how and why he never quite made it as a rock star; the stunts and other perils that come his way like the TopGear North Pole race (why is it Richard who is out in the howling elements in a dog sled whilst the others are in the heated cab of an all-terrain vehicle?), Africa where he falls in love with and repatriates a stray car, and the US (once to be chased by Rednecks in middle America, the other in pursuit of his mad hero Evel Knievel); his passion for cars, what he owns and why and although he loves his wife why it is a toss-up whether he says hello to the wife or the cars first. Balancing home and family with a crazy, peripatetic working life (or not, sometimes), the hamster is well and truly back on the wheel.