Former Top Gear host Chris Harris has said he expressed safety concerns to the BBC before co-presenter Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s injury at the show’s test track and told them that someone could die.
TV presenter and former England cricketer Flintoff, 46, was badly hurt in an accident while filming at Surrey’s Dunsfold Aerodrome in December 2022, which led to the show being rested for the “foreseeable future” by the BBC.
Speaking about the accident on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Harris said: “I ran to the window, looked out, and he wasn’t moving.
“So I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved.”
Harris told the host: “The bit that I find really difficult is that 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.
“We all kept quiet. We said nothing, and 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 when my contract was up, so suddenly I haven’t got a job.”
Harris continued: “And I just sort of got my head down. But I had seen this coming.
“There was a big inquiry, a lot of soul searching. The BBC is good at that.
“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 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 have a fatality’.”
Harris also said he had asked to have a meeting with the head of health and safety.
He added: “What’s really killed me is that no one’s ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand.
“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.”
Former Take Me Out host Paddy McGuinness and Flintoff joined motoring journalist and racing driver Harris on the show in 2019.
The BBC has been approached for comment.
Source: Press Association