BBC confirms Top Gear is coming back four years after Andrew Flintoff crash

The BBC has confirmed Top Gear is returning to screens four years after a crash that almost killed presenter Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff.The show has been on hiatus since Flintoff was seriously injured during filming in December 2022.The former cricketer was taken to hospital with facial and rib injuries following the accident at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, when he was driving a Morgan Super 3.The car, which did not have a roof, flipped upside down and skidded on the tarmac before coming to a stop.Freddie Flintoff (Tim Goode/PA)PA ArchiveAfter the crash, the BBC said Top Gear would be “rested” for the foreseeable future, after reaching a financial settlement with Flintoff, an agreement reportedly worth around £9 million.However, the BBC’s director of entertainment Ed Havard confirmed the news of the return at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Thursday.Speaking at a panel event, he was asked whether the show would be returning to the national broadcaster.He said: “There has been a lot of speculation about this and we can confirm that Top Gear is coming back.“I’m not going to talk about talent today.”Havard had been asked whether Jimmy Carr would be hosting. He replied: “Jimmy would be a great host but I won’t be discussing that today.“We will have more information on Top Gear shortly.”After the original Top Gear series ran from 1977 until 2001, it was then revived in 2002.Jimmy Carr has been speculated to take over as host (Ian West/ PA)PA ArchiveThe programme’s first season was presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Jason Dawe, with an anonymous test driver, The Stig, also featuring.In the second season, Dawe was replaced by James May, with the line-up then remaining unchanged until the end of the twenty-second season, when the BBC did not renew Clarkson’s contract after he punched a producer.Read MoreClarkson gave Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon a bloody lip in a bust-up in March 2015.The presenter’s contract was not renewed by the BBC and he also issued a formal apology in a deal to settle a racial discrimination and personal injury claim.His exit than saw his co-hosts also leave Top Gear, with the trio then signing up for another motoring show – the Amazon Prime Video series The Grand Tour.Although TV presenter and radio DJ Chris Evans and Friends star Matt LeBlanc then took over as hosts, Evans left after just six episodes.The show also received criticism after LeBlanc and a rally driver performed “doughnuts” near the Cenotaph war memorial in London’s Whitehall.The series was presented by Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May until 2015 (Ellis O’Brien/BBC/PA)PA MediaAnother new line-up was unveiled in 2019, which included Flintoff alongside motoring presenter and journalist Rory Reid and comedian and actor Paddy McGuinness.However, three years after joining the series, Flintoff nearly died following the crash at Dunsfold Aerodrome.Flintoff previously revealed he was deeply impacted by the crash and did not leave his house for six months other than to attend medical appointments.Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored, he said: “You know, I suffer from PTSD.“I have flashbacks and nightmares, but I’ve probably got more of an acceptance of them now.”In the Disney + documentary Flintoff, released last year, the presenter admitted that after the accident he did not think he had it in him to “get through”.He said: “This sounds awful … part of me wishes I’d been killed. Part of me thinks, I wish I’d died. I didn’t want to kill myself … I wouldn’t mistake the two things. I was not wishing, I was just thinking, ‘this would have been so much easier’.Reflecting on his recovery, the former England cricket captain said his then three-and-a-half-year-old son Preston “wouldn’t come near me”.Flintoff said he was left with PTSD after the crash (Mike Egerton/PA)PA Archive“I think it frightened him, my face, it frightened me. That was heartbreaking,” he said in the documentary.“I’ve got PTSD and I get anxious, for periods of time, I just find myself crying for no particular reason.”Flintoff also said that he relived the crash every night when he goes to bed and described the experience as a “vivid” movie.“Even the memories of it are real, to the point where now I’m talking about it and I’m getting a bit jittery and I can feel the pain on the side of my face. I can feel like a phantom pain. It’s like a bit of a curse, really,” he said.