Richard Hammond relives Top Gear exit after Jeremy Clarkson row and admits daughter feared he couldn’t afford KFC

Richard Hammond has opened up about his financial woes following the Jeremy Clarkson Top Gear row that cost him his job.

Jeremy Clarkson, 64, was suspended by the BBC in 2015, for an “unprovoked physical attack” on Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon.

The TV presenter, 53, from Solihull, chose to stand by his pal and not continue with the smash-hit show when Clarkson was told his contract would not be renewed just weeks later.

Hammond was left without an income and claims he was worried about paying the bills of his plush house as well as private school tuition fees for his two daughters.

“I was looking at my house thinking ‘this is going to get expensive to run really’ and looking at my two girls in their nice private school uniforms - ‘oooh, this is all going to really to hurt,” he told Fuelling Around podcast.

The proud father of two recalls the painful moment he told his daughters Izzy, 22, and Willow, 19, about the financial implications of losing his job.

“So we sat them down, Mindy and I and said: ‘Right guys, you need to know, I know people have mentioned it at school, but my job’s gone, and that’s where the money comes from. We haven’t got a money tree in the garden’.”

His daughter Izzy took the conversation on board and was concerned that her father could not afford purchases, including food at KFC.

“After we finished the show, James had come over to stay with me for a few days. We’d gone to Kentucky Fried Chicken to get lunch for everyone with Izzy, he recalled.

“We got to the front of the queue, put our order in, and James typically said: ‘Oh, oh, I’ll pay Hammond’ and I said ‘no, no mate, I’ll pay’ and he said ‘no, no, no I’ll pay’.

“And there was a pause, just when the whole restaurant had gone quiet, and Izzy said: ‘Well, technically, lads, I should pay as you haven’t got a job between you. The place detonated with laughter.”

He added: “She obviously then thought ‘this is the best game’. So subsequently, at the end of the queue in Morrisons, as I was waiting to pay, she would say very loudly: ‘Daddy, daddy, so when does your credit card stop working?’ and I’d go ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ and again a whole store of people were in hysterics.”

The 53-year-old could be facing money worries once again, with Amazon Prime rumoured to be ending their popular motoring programme, The Grand Tour.

It has been suggested that the streaming giant is cutting ties with 62-year-old Clarkson from 2024 following his hateful tirade about Meghan Markle in The Sun.

It is likely to be a huge concern for Hammond, who reportedly doubled his £500,000-a-year Beeb salary when The Grand Tour hit the streaming service in November 2016.

The first episode of season five aired in September 2022 and is scheduled for four more special episodes in 2024.

While Hammond has remained tight-lipped about the situation, his Grand Tour co-star James May has admitted on social media he is enduring a “difficult time”.

For now, fans and the iconic trio will have to wait to learn of the show’s longer-term fate as a result of the latest storm involving Clarkson.