Richard Hammond shares humourous insight on ‘mid-life crisis tattoo’

The Grand Tour star Richard Hammond has revealed the hilarious thinking behind his “midlife crisis tattoo”.

When the star, affectionately known as The Hamster, turned 50 he got the words “micris fidelis” inked on his skin for his first tattoo.

 This didn’t go unnoticed by Chris Evans last week when the now 53-year-old presenter appeared on his Virgin Radio Breakfast Show.

The inking is on the inside of his bicep and Richard explained what it meant.

“It says ‘micris fidelis’, which in sort of cod Latin means ‘faithful to small things,'” he revealed.

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“But it’s a letter-perfect anagram of midlife crisis. So that is my midlife crisis tattoo,” he proudly exclaimed.

 “It took me months to work out,” he confessed. “I wanted an anagram of midlife crisis.”

 “So, when people point at it and go, ‘you’re 53 and you’ve had your first tattoo! You’re having a midlife crisis.’ That’s what it says,” he laughed.

Richard is lucky to be here to celebrate his midlife having famously survived two car very serious crashes.

The first occurred in 2006 when his jet-powered dragster flipped while filming Top Gear. 

He spent two weeks in a coma and suffered serious head injuries but recovered and returned to the show in early 2007.

Then in 2017 he tumbled down an Alpine ravine in a £2million sports car. 

In February this year he spoke Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast about the long term effects of the 2006 accident.

He said his injuries “could mean there is an increased risk” of a condition linked to memory loss. 

“I have to consciously write memories down and work hard to recall them sometimes,” he confessed.

“It might be because I’m 53, it might be because I’m working a lot and I’m tired, it might be the onset of something else,” he explained.

Richard conceded that he “probably needs an MRI scan” to get to the bottom of it.

But he also pointed out he was “quite forgetful” as a person, “so I do drop the ball – I forget stuff, I forget keys”.

“That’s just me, that’s not a function of something going wrong. It’s how I am,” he said.