He almost lost his life when he was involved in a 320 mile crash in 2006 while filming a Top Gear stunt at Elvington Airfield in York.
Richard Hammond, 53, was driving a vampire jet car when one of the tires blew out causing it to spin out of control and crash, falling on his head and leaving him in a coma.
And on the Diary Of A CEO podcast, Richard admitted he now fears he may develop dementia as a result of the frontal lobe brain injury he sustained.
He said: “I worry about my memory because it’s not brilliant. I can still read and deliver a script, but my long-term memory isn’t brilliant.
“Sometimes I have to write things down and work hard to remember them. It could be old age, it could be the beginning of something else, I worry about that. i do i do
“I should probably go and find out because I do.”
Host Steven Bartlett asked him, “Are you afraid to find out?”
He said: “It’s me because there was bleeding in the front. It could mean that there is an increased risk. I have to find out. I was too scared to do it. I have to do it.
“Strangely, I had to stop for a medical on the way here 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 have To for one of those mid-life MOTs and check everything. I wanted to ask her to see if nothing’s going wrong up here [pointing to his head]. But I was wrong. Not.
“That means I’ll probably need an MRI scan, but at 53 your memory starts to wane a bit… they call it Lost Key Syndrome.
“I’m quite forgetful, generally thinking about something else, next, and that’s why I drop the ball, I forget a lot. Thats only me. It’s me.’
After the crash, which left Richard “remarkably close” to death, Richard admitted to suffering from depression.
Near miss: He suffered a second encounter with death after his £2million supercar crashed off a hill and burst into flames as it sped through rural Switzerland at high speed
He said: “I have no recollection because there was a frontal lobe hemorrhage. I just braked backwards and used my head as a brake, which isn’t good for you.
He added: “Mindy. [his wife]was told by the doctors that an injury to the frontal lobe would possibly make me more prone to obsessive compulsions and depression and paranoia.
Mindy was like, ‘You didn’t meet him before the crash did you?’ which is pretty funny, to be fair. I think I suffered a bit, I suffered all of those things to some extent.
“Some of those were really weird moments and I still get an echo of that.
“I remember being institutionalized in hospitals and in recovery for a very long time… I would come to London to do something.
“I opened the closet door and looked at all the shirts and just tried to work out… it was too much. The choice was very difficult for me for a long time.”
He continued, “Feeling like your emotions are being derailed or disrupted because of a neurochemical imbalance is just chemicals and electricity.
“I was walking down the driveway of my house and I felt this sudden surge, this surge of love in my chest and I was like, what is this?
“Eventually I realized it, I had walked past my old Land Rover, which I love but only because I like it that much, but it just absolutely triggered that… I thought, damn, it made me think.
“If emotions can be so profoundly affected by what was just a mix-up of chemicals and electricity in my head, then I’m more aware of things.
“Well I don’t listen too closely to my feelings when I’m very, very tired or if I had a big night with the boys the night before.
“When I’ve had red wine, I don’t vote to see what I think about anything. For one day it doesn’t matter. These are the rules.
“I was angry for a while, anger is a problem when you’re recovering from a brain injury. I wanted a t-shirt that said on the front, “I’m fine, stop asking,” and on the back, “I’m still bad, you know.”
During the interview, Richard also spoke about health anxiety.
He said: “It’s not surprising that we don’t want to face it. I’m practicing mindfulness a bit, and as you get older it makes it easier to talk about.
“You don’t have to imagine a world without you because you won’t be in it.”
And speaking about the aftermath of the crash, Richard said: “I had very bad post-traumatic amnesia for weeks
“Like a one-minute reminder. Mindy, my wife, said I was the nicest I’ve ever been. Apparently beautiful.
“I was perfectly happy reading the same newspaper several times a day until Mindy took it away from me because she got tired of seeing me read it.
“If someone is in that confused state for any reason, if they’re happy, they’re happy. All you have to do is cope with supporting them. It doesn’t matter if they can’t remember who you are. And I was.
Richard admits his height – he’s 5ft 7in – gave him a lack of confidence early in life.
He said: “Every compensatory move that anyone short has ever made, I’ve done it. I showed all these qualities. I was just irritating, honestly.
“Because I was aware that I was smaller than everyone else and wanted to be a bigger noise in the room, I wanted to disrupt and do stuff, but I didn’t want to be naughty.
I still hate being in trouble. It bothers me and it did at the time. I wouldn’t have dared.
“I was embarrassed to be shorter. It’s not something you crave. It really doesn’t bother me now, but often when I first meet people after they’ve seen me on TV there’s a moment where they’re disappointed because they expect to meet something you’re doing for Christmas would put tree or on the mantelpiece.
“But I’m 5ft 7in, so I’m really pretty average. It’s just that I work with much bigger people all the time.”
He continued, “As a kid, it was what drove me and it’s bullying. I never fooled about it. But that’s how it is and it influenced me a lot. I overcompensated. I felt like I had to.
“You take that with you into the room. Anything that makes you different, whatever that is, you bring into the room with you and it’s kind of… you have to compensate for it. Be funnier, or be faster, or be angrier, or be louder, or be naughtier.
“If that could be absorbed and didn’t matter, you could just be yourself. That’s probably one of the reasons I’m a broadcaster now.”
He added: “I’ve always said that the people worst at dealing with the pitfalls of success in the media are, by definition, the same people who are the only ones motivated enough to achieve it because they compensate .
“That’s why it’s so dangerous. Only the man or woman who is so desperate to get there will have persevered and endured sacrificing friends, time and free time, and sometimes dignity and whatever, to get there, and therefore least able to do with it to deal with, if whatever it is they craved will be given to them.
“But they would be better off satisfying the craving, eliminating the craving, than satisfying it. That’s my theory.’
Opening: Richard Hammond admits his family – wife Mindy and daughters Isabella and Willow – have yet to see footage of the near-fatal accident, which was filmed while filming scenes for the second season of popular Amazon show The Grand Tour at the June turned