Richard Mark Hammond (born 19 December 1969) is an English television presenter, writer, and journalist. He is best known for co-hosting the BBC Two car programme Top Gear from 2002 until 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson and James May. In 2016, Hammond began presenting The Grand Tour television series, produced by W. Chump & Sons. The show is co-presented with his former Top Gear co-hosts, Clarkson and May, as an exclusive distributed via Amazon Video to Amazon Prime customers.
In November 2016, Hammond, alongside the co-presenters of The Grand Tour, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, launched the automotive social media website DriveTribe, where he regularly provides content on his tribe "Hammond's Fob Jockeys". He has also presented Brainiac: Science Abuse (2003–2008), Total Wipeout (2009–2012) and Planet Earth Live (2012).
Richard Mark Hammond was born on 19 December 1969 in Solihull, Warwickshire, and is the grandson of workers in the Birmingham car industry. In the mid-1980s Hammond moved with his family (mother Eileen, father Alan, and younger brothers Andrew, writer of the 'Crypt' series, and Nicholas) to the North Yorkshire cathedral city of Ripon where his father ran a probate business in the market square. He attended Blossomfield Infant School in Solihull's Sharmans Cross district from the age of 3–7. Originally a pupil of Solihull School, a fee-paying boys' independent school, he moved to Ripon Grammar School, and from 1986 to 1988 attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology.