Former Top Gear star Chris Harris has claimed he expressed safety concerns to the BBC before 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 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, 49, said: “I ran to the window, looked out, and he (Flintoff) wasn’t moving.
“So I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved.”
He added: “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.”
He added: “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, the very worst we have a fatality.'”
Harris also claimed 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.”
He continued: “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.
BBC Studios previously said a health and safety production review of Top Gear, which did not cover the accident but instead 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”.
It added: “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.”
The BBC did not wish to comment on Harris’s claims.
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