Freddie Flintoff admits he barely speaks to Paddy McGuinness after near-fatal Top Gear car crash
Freddie Flintoff has admitted that he hasn't really spoken with Paddy McGuinness very much since his horrific crash on Top Gear.
The cricket legend and TV presenter had been filming a segment for the BBC car show in December 2022 when he was driving a Morgan Super 3, an open-topped car, and it flipped over.
While the car had only been travelling at 22 miles per hour, Flintoff was not wearing a crash helmet, and he suffered some horrific injuries, as he was scraped along the Top Gear test track.
Fellow presenter Chris Harris was present, and said he initially thought Flintoff was dead as he couldn't see him moving at first.
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When the cricketer first spoke about the crash on Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, he said: "I genuinely should not be here after what happened."
A new documentary, simply titled Flintoff after the man himself, goes into more detail about exactly what happened and the aftermath of the crash that almost robbed him of his life.
Top Gear was put on hiatus after the crash and the BBC said it would not return for the 'foreseeable future', though Flintoff's co-presenters have since worked together on Paddy and Chris: Road Tripping.
In Flintoff, the cricketer said he'd had a close bond with them both, but hadn't spoken to them very much since the crash.
He said: "We’ve been in contact, I saw Chris actually. We hugged each other, he got upset, I got upset. It was really nice to see him.
"And I feel bad I haven’t been more in contact with him and Paddy. I think there was some comments on Paddy a while ago saying I’ve not spoken to him, not done this, that and the other.
"And part of it is, for myself a little bit, you know what I mean?
"I hate the word triggering but I’m worried about that. It’s also something stopped in some ways I suppose because of what happened to me, like, their careers have been altered as well, so I feel, not guilty but I feel bad for them.
"And also, it’s like, what happened gets dragged up enough in my own head without adding to that."
Harris said that when it came to Flintoff, he was 'loved to bits', with the former Top Gear presenter describing him as 'a lovely man'.
As for Paddy McGuinness, he previously spoke about being glad that his former co-star was getting back into TV work.
"When we did Top Gear, we're that close you're together all of the time," McGuinness said of working with Flintoff and Harris.
"You're going around the world and everything else you have a real bond."
He then spoke of Flintoff's return to TV, saying he was 'glad he's getting back into it'.
Flintoff will release on Disney+ on 25 April.
Topics: Disney Plus, Freddie Flintoff, TV and Film, Top Gear, Paddy McGuinness, Mental Health
Joe Harker