Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: BBC, Top Gear, Freddie Flintoff, UK News
Stefania Sarrubba
Top Gear host Chris Harris has looked back on Freddie Flintoff's car crash, saying he'd warned the BBC an accident could've happened due to safety failings.
In a new interview, Harris has broken his silence on the matter and recalled one of the scariest days on the BBC car show, which he co-presented with Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness.
In December 2022, former England cricketer Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff was involved in a crash as he was driving a three-wheeled supercar. He sustained several injuries, including multiple broken ribs and facial scarring, and was 'lucky to be alive'.
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Now, speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Harris said production on the day of the accident was 'rushed', with Flintoff not even wearing a helmet and not having been briefed properly on the car.
"He wasn't wearing a crash helmet. And if you do that, even at 25, 30 miles an hour, the injuries that you sustain are profound. I was there on the day, I was the only presenter with Fred that day," Harris said to host Rogan.
"I remember the radio message that I heard," he continued. "I heard someone say this has been a real accident here. The car's upside down.
"So I ran to the window, looked out and he wasn't moving," Harris added, explaining he thought Flintoff had died.
"So I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved."
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Speaking about the shoot, Harris said it was 'very difficult'.
"So that day was very difficult, made even more difficult by the fact that the build-up to that particular shoot, I knew that we were - at the last minute - that we were using a Morgan three-wheeler," he said, describing it as a 'very difficult car'.
"The name tells you its physics is complicated. It doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous," he said.
“You have to be aware of its limitations. And I think that really was difficult. And you need experience."
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Harris and a pro driver on set were the only two people who had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before, but Harris claimed they weren't consulted prior to Flintoff getting in the car.
"There were two people that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before present that day, me and someone else, a pro driver," Harris said.
"We were sitting inside at that time. No one had asked us anything about the car. They'd just gone on and shot it without us."
Harris said it's hard for him to reminisce on that day.
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"I think if I'm looking in the mirror, I find it very difficult, even now, that Andrew, who I loved to bits, a lovely man, he was a pro cricket player. He wasn't an automotive guy," he said.
"And because of the call times that day, that was the first time we'd never had the chance to talk about how he might approach a difficult vehicle.
"And that was the one day that it went wrong. I find that very difficult to live with. And I feel partly responsible because I didn't get the chance to talk to him."
Harris then said he had spoken to production three months before Flintoff's accident.
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"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'," he said. "I said, 'If we carry on at the very least we're gonna have a serious injury at the very worst we're gonna have fatality'."
The BBC went on to issue a full apology and compensation payout following the crash.
LADbible has reached out to the BBC for comment.