Top Gear host says he ‘feared show wouldn’t end well’ after Freddie Flintoff became presenter
TOP Gear presenter Rory Reid has become the latest star to open up about the show, admitting he feared the series “wouldn’t end well”.
Rory, 44, had been a member of the Top Gear presenting team since 2016, joining the show alongside the major rebrand that saw Chris Evans and Matt Le Blanc take over from Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
In an interview with Times Radio on Friday, Rory admitted he began to worry when sports star Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff and Take Me Out presenter Paddy McGuinness were taking over as the main hosts.
“Absolutely instantly, it was the first thing I thought other than this is an exciting development for the show and I’m interested to see how this turns out,” Rory said.
“The first thing I thought was these men, who I’ve been lucky enough to watch on their entertainment journeys and sports journeys, who are fabulous at what they do, I don’t think they have the driving experience to the level where they would be able to do some of the things the BBC asked me to do.”
He added that it “wasn’t for him to say” if the BBC gave them extra tuition, time and care away from filming to make them “comfortable and safe” because he wasn’t there.
“But based on my experience, if you asked me whether putting someone without that level of driving experience in those situations and whether it would end well…? No.”
In December 2022, Freddie had a near-death accident while filming the series at Dunsfold Aerodrome, leaving him with permanent facial scarring and trauma that he still experiences to this day.
The show was shelved shortly thereafter with no sign of it returning to screens anytime soon.
Freddie received a seven-figure settlement from the BBC as a result of the accident.
Rory’s comments come just hours after his co-star, Chris Harris, appeared on Joe Rogan’s and claimed he warned bosses months before the accident that “someone’s going to die” if safety issues on the motoring programme weren’t addressed.
Chris said his co-hosts Freddie and Paddy were “brilliant entertainers” but “didn’t have the experience I had in cars” and were not “qualified to make decisions”.
He added that, after witnessing Freddie’s accident – in which a three-wheeled car flipped at a high-speed, without Freddie wearing a helmet – that the cricketing star had been killed.
During his chat with Times Radio, Rory agrees the show came with a level of expected threat.
“The show is occasionally inherently dangerous, just by nature of the fact that you are driving heavy machinery, very fast cars, very powerful cars, very quickly in a way that makes them look good on TV,” Rory explained.
“So this is not people just jumping into a car and going 30 miles an hour on the road. This is driving them in a way that is exciting and fun. And it is quite difficult to do that if you don’t have a background in driving cars very quickly and understand the kind of driving dynamics and things that can go right and wrong very quickly.”
Rory, who worked as a journalist specialising in motors and technology ahead of his stint on Top Gear, added that he had asked for extra training himself for some of the show’s stunts so he would be “better equipped” for what was asked of him.
“I was actually the one who asked them to give me extra training,” he said. “I think in my second series, I said, ‘listen, can you give me some extra tuition on the specific stunts that you asked us to do during this show?’. And eventually, they gave me a couple of hours with a stunt driver to practise some of the manoeuvres that they occasionally ask us to do.
“But no, there’s no driving lesson when you join the show, they don’t sit you down and give you a five-day course in high-performance driving, they expect you to be able to do what they ask you to do.”
The Sun has contacted the BBC for comment and clarification on Rory Reid’s claims.
Freddie Flintoff's nightmare Top Gear crash
WE reported at the time of the crash how Freddie was heard fearfully yelling, “I can’t stop,” as he hurtled head-first down a runway just inches off the ground in a three-wheeled cycle car.
He had been racing his co-hosts when he realised he was running out of road and about to overshoot the finish line – seeing him spin off in a cloud of dust.
Medics rushed to treat him at the scene and he was rushed to hospital.
Sources claimed the trio were originally meant to compete along a mile track but bosses extended it to 1.4miles in a bid to get higher speeds.
The former England cricketer had been shooting an episode for the hit BBC series at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome before the shock smash.
In November, after the culmination of an investigation into health and safety on Top Gear, BBC Studios said: “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.”