He was the short one on Top Gear, the “hamster” beside the hulking bombastic Jeremy Clarkson. “That’s why I keep on doing all the dangerous stuff,” Richard Hammond said last year. “I’m compensating for being small.”

But he was beginning to move out of Clarkson’s shadow. He couldn’t draw the same audiences when he took over Paul O’Grady’s 5pm chatshow on ITV, but a BBC programme in which Hammond hunted for the Holy Grail was well received. He had another job on Sky One and further shows were in the pipeline when a 288mph near-death crash propelled him headlong into the public consciousness.

“The last time I was in hospital was when I was 5 and needed grommets,” he said in his first full interview this week. “My mind flashed back to that time.”

It was at that age that Hammond had calculated how many days he would have to wait before he would be allowed to drive. In the meantime, his grandfather built him a pedal car.

When the great day arrived, Hammond took his test with a “scary” female examiner who told him to “proceed as normal” as he approached a set of traffic lights on amber. Hammond put his foot down. He failed.

Hammond was “a bit of a rebel” at Ripon Grammar School, dropping out to study visual arts at Harrogate College of Art and Technology.

Afterwards he became a reporter for BBC Radio York. A traffic warden interrupted his first live broadcast to tell him that he was illegally parked. Moving to Radio Lancashire, he met a motoring broadcaster paid to drive cars. After that Hammond’s career starts to look like a well-planned journey.

He moved to Manchester to take a job in motoring PR to build up industry contacts and at 28 landed his own satellite show, Men and Motors.

The Top Gear audition was in 2002. His agent had the unlikely impression that “they wanted a woman”. Hammond pronounced himself “very lucky”. He had his dream job, and a comfortable domestic life in Gloucestershire, with his wife Amanda — “Mindy” — two daughters and a menagerie of cats, dogs, rabbits, sheep, horses, a fleet of cars and a motorbike.

On Top Gear he declared himself a “driving god” and snapped up the riskiest shoots — fast cars, submerged cars, bull-running in Pamplona — but continued to be regarded as “cute”.

“I’m top of a Z-list nookie league,” Hammond complained.

He is firmly A-list now: the BBC has offered him a £2 million “golden handcuffs” contract to secure his development as a national treasure. His recovery has been aided by a return to “a childlike state”. He must be nearly ready to return to Top Gear.