Richard Hammond says emotional end of The Grand Tour will ‘hit me slowly’

The 54-year-old has presented the Amazon Prime Video show alongside Jeremy Clarkson and James May since 2016, after the trio left the BBC’s motoring programme Top Gear.

In the final instalment, The Grand Tour: One For The Road, they travel to Zimbabwe where they explore challenging landscapes in cars the three men have always wanted – a Lancia Montecarlo, a Ford Capri 3-litre and a Triumph Stag.

Speaking about the end of 23 years working with Clarkson and May, Hammond told the PA news agency: “I don’t think it’s sunk in, you could see it starting to sink in when we were shooting the final scenes of the final one.

“People were starting to realise, oh, hang on a minute, this is the end. I remember when it started 23 years ago, thinking great, well, this is a network opportunity.

“It’s the show I’ve always loved as a kid, it’s a show I’d always wanted to do, brilliant.

“It might last, I might get a couple of years out of this. I didn’t think it would occupy most of my adult working life.

“It took me from just 30 to 54, so it’s quite a big slab of of my existence.

“I think it’ll probably hit me slowly over the next few months – at some point I’ll realise, oh, hang on, I don’t do that any more.

“It’s going to be odd.”

Hammond went on to speak about his final shoot with the crew he had worked with since his Top Gear days.

He added: “It was an emotional shoot, there were plenty of moments when you’d be chatting to somebody of an evening and… they just got off on their own for a little bit, for a quiet moment.

“Because we’re a big family, we’ve worked with the same 20-odd people for 20 years, and not just in a normal way.

“We’ve shared tents in jungles, and dog sledges, and ferries across African lakes, and incredible experiences together.

“We’ve seen one another good and bad, happy and sad, and strong and weak, so that’s a real bond.”

Hammond said he “wouldn’t rule anything out” when asked whether he would work with Clarkson and May again, despite saying “we’re all busy”, but added the trio would definitely stay in touch.

He said the group had “got close” while working together on Top Gear and The Grand Tour.

Hammond added: “There was a magic that used to happen, that I really felt, at the beginning of every shoot.

“So we’d spend months planning these things, and then we’d get out on to the ground and we’d all be finally, at last, it’s day one, moment one, standing on the desert sand, or glacier, or jungle, or mountain, or wherever we were.

“And the whole crew would be gathered around, the same camera operators, and sound, and all familiar faces in our big family, and then the director would say ‘action’, and it’s as though we’d all stepped into a world that we’d all been in anyway.

“When we were in that world, it’s a place where if something happened that we couldn’t plan for, and we hope it does, because that’s where the show lies, in the bits we couldn’t plan for

“When it does we thank god that our crew are so good that they could get it.

“So there’s no point fun or dangerous or exciting things happening if they’re not filmed because then we can’t share it with the viewer.

“But when they do, not only are the crew ready to to be on it, we kind of know, Jeremy will know if it’s something that James will react to, or I’ll know that, if I say this about that, that’s just happened, he will kick off in this way, and we know that, it’s a sort of shorthand which speeds things up.

“And it means we can make it much more natural because we know where the fun will lie.”

Hammond thanked audiences from the past 23 years whose homes he and his co-hosts had “invaded”.

He added: “It’s like being good guests in people’s living rooms for the last two decades or so.

“And we needed to say thank you for having us, so that’s what we’ve set out to do, and I hope succeeded.”

The Grand Tour: One For The Road launches on Prime Video on Friday September 13.