Former Top Gear host Freddie Flintoff, 47, has opened up about the difficulties he’s faced following the car accident which nearly killed him and left him scarred for life
Freddie Flintoff has admitted that he couldn’t bear to watch TV shows with car crashes after his horror smash.
The former Top Gear host and cricket ace was also left in tears over heart-tugging ads after the accident which nearly killed him and left him scarred for life.
Freddie, 47, confessed: “After the crash, I disappeared. Not in a dramatic way. I just sort of… vanished. From view. From life.
“I didn’t leave the house except for medical appointments. I didn’t go out. I didn’t socialise. Some days, I didn’t even know what I was watching. The screen would be on but my mind wasn’t really there.
“I’d cry at the strangest things. A story about a kid with a cleft lip. An appeal for a donkey sanctuary. The tears would come from nowhere. I wasn’t sad about the ad.
“I was just cracked open, emotions leaking out from somewhere I couldn’t quite name. I’d cry without knowing why. That became the rhythm: numbness, then flood.”
Freddie, real name Andrew, suffered serious injuries when the three-wheeler car he was driving for Top Gear rolled over in 2022 and thought at the time his “face had come off”. He said that during months of recovery after being sent home from hospital he would spend hours on end just watching telly.
The ex-cricketer continued: “The hours slipped past without shape. Outside, the world carried on. Inside, I was paused. I watched everything.
“Every box set. Every streaming service. Cobra Kai. All of it. Stuff I’d never normally bother with.
“I couldn’t handle anything violent. Couldn’t manage car crashes or chase scenes. Some adverts were too much – especially the charity ones with kids or animals. I’d have to turn them off.”
Meanwhile, in his new book Coming Home the Ashes winner revealed strictly -come-dancing>Strictly Come Dancing producers wouldn’t take no for an answer despite him turning them down every year.
He added: “Strictly? They used to ask all the time. Threw money at it, tried everything. I said no.
“Not because I hate dancing – well, I do hate dancing – but because I don’t want to learn routines, I don’t want to do those cringey bits to camera, and I definitely don’t want to become part of that machine.
“I just don’t care about it. And they don’t get that. They keep asking.”
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