'I warned BBC someone would die on Top Gear before Freddie Flintoff crash'

‘No one’s ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand,’ the TV presenter said (Picture: PA/Getty)

Former Top Gear star Chris Harris has revealed that months before Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s horrific crash on the BBC series, he warned the broadcaster that ‘someone’s going to die on this show’ unless changes were made.

In December 2022, former professional cricket player Flintoff was involved in a devastating accident at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey, which had been the test track used by the show since 2002.

After having to wait 45 minutes for a helicopter to arrive at the scene, Flintoff was airlifted to hospital and suffered multiple facial injuries and broken ribs.

It was said that the now-46-year-old was ‘lucky to be alive’.

In a new interview, Harris, who presented Top Gear alongside Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness before the programme was ‘rested’, explained that he had ‘seen this coming’.

Speaking on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, the 49-year-old said: ‘The bit that I find really difficult was in the aftermath of that accident, the show was put on hold, Andrew had to recover from frankly awful injuries, and has done so, profound injuries.

Harris (centre) presented Top Gear from 2016, with McGuinness and Flintoff joining him from 2019 to 2022 (Picture: PA/Lee Brimble)

‘We all kept quiet, we said nothing. I said nothing because I wanted to look after him. It wasn’t my story, was it? I was caught up in the collateral damage, I lost my job immediately because they cancelled the show and my contract was up. So suddenly I haven’t got a job.

‘But again you look in the mirror and think I’m alive, I’ve got three beautiful children, I’m not in Fred’s position. Andrew and Fred are the same person, sorry – that’s his nickname. And I just sort of got my head down. But I had seen this coming.’

Harris, who is an automotive journalist and a professional racing driver, explained to Rogan that ‘there was a big inquiry’ and ‘a lot of soul searching’, adding: ‘The BBC’s good at that.’

He continued: ‘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.” So I went to them, I went to the BBC and I told them of my concerns from what I’d seen as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile.

‘I said if we carry on at the very least we’re going to have a serious injury at the very worst we’re going to have fatality.’

Flintoff recently returned to TV with his series Field of Dreams (Picture: BBC/South Shore Productions/Anirudh Agarwal)

Harris outlined that he himself is not a risk-averse person, sharing that he enjoys risk.

He also stated that in his opinion, if people sign up to do a show like Top Gear, they understand that they’re entering into an environment that carries risk.

However, the ‘critical thing’ that happened on Top Gear, he said, was that his co-hosts Flintoff and McGuinness, who didn’t have the experience with cars that he did, were in situations that became ‘too dangerous’.

‘What happened with Top Gear was I saw repeatedly too many times my two co-hosts, who didn’t have the experience I had in cars – this is the critical thing. I’m qualified to make those decisions because I’ve done it a long time. They weren’t,’ Harris stated.

‘One of them is an actor-comedian. The other guy is a pro cricket player. Brilliant entertainers. They were great hosts. But their roles were to make people laugh. And my role was to tell people what cars were like. And all too often in the last year, I saw situations where it got too dangerous.’

Harris recollected how it ‘culminated’ with a moment in Thailand, when he and McGuinness, 51, were doing a race down a hill in wooden go-karts that had no engine.

Harris (right) said that he witnessed situations ‘where it got too dangerous’ (Picture: PA/Lee Brimble/BBC Studios)

The TV star remembered remarking at the time that it’s ‘not a question of whether we get injured – it’s how injured we get’.

Going back to the months preceding Flintoff’s crash, Harris said: ‘I went to the BBC and I said I want to have a meeting with the head of health and safety, because this is not good.

‘What’s really killed me, is that no one’s ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand. It’s very difficult to live with that, initially for me, when I knew, I thought I’d done the right thing. I’m not very good at that, I normally just go with the flow. But I saw this coming, I thought I did the right thing.

‘I went to the BBC and I found out really that no one had taken me very seriously. I did a bit of digging afterwards. The conversation I had with those people was sort of acknowledged. Then they tried to sort of shut me down a bit and then they didn’t look after me at all, they just sort of left me to rot.

‘Even now, I’m totally perplexed by the whole thing. To actually say to an organisation, “This is going to go wrong,” and then be there the day that it goes wrong, is a position I never expected to be in and I never want to be in again. It’s strange and pretty heartbreaking in many ways. I love that show.’

It was said after the crash that Flintoff was ‘lucky to be alive’ (Picture: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)

After being contacted by Metro.co.uk, the BBC shared the BBC Studios’ statement regarding the health and safety review of Top Gear, which reads: ‘The independent Health and Safety production review of Top Gear, which looked at previous seasons, found that while BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practice in making the show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions.

‘The report included a number of recommendations to improve approaches to safety as Top Gear is a complex programme-making environment routinely navigating tight filming schedules and ambitious editorial expectations – challenges often experienced by long-running shows with an established on and off-screen team.

‘Learnings included a detailed action plan involving changes in the ways of working, such as increased clarity on roles and responsibilities and better communication between teams for any future Top Gear production.’

A separate investigation was conducted into Flintoff’s crash.

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