The 36-year-old had a miraculous escape when he crashed a 300mph jet-powered dragster while filming a stunt for the programme in September.

Hammond suffered brain injuries in the crash at Elvington airfield in York as he attempted to break the British land speed record.

The footage showed the moment a tyre burst on the Vampire jet car causing it to skid and flip over.

Hammond, who has no memory of the crash, watched alongside co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May.

He said experts who analysed footage of the crash said he had displayed the reactions of a fighter pilot.

Asked by Clarkson why he had attempted a final run in the car after having already reached speeds of 314mph - the fastest anyone has ever travelled on land in Britain - Hammond said: "I dunno. That run we just watched was at about 5 o’clock and we had the runway until 5.30pm. I suppose it’s like when you were playing outside as a kid and then your mum called you in for dinner. You’d always stay out for a bit longer..."

"And that’s when you’d fall out the tree," Clarkson remarked. "As it happens, yes," Hammond said.

It was the first time the father-of-two had appeared on the show since the crash. He re-entered the studio down a flight of steps flanked by lines of showgirls and declared himself to be "fixed".

Hammond’s drive to win back licence - Jan 22 2007
Doctors were reluctant to give Richard Hammond his driving licence back after his near-fatal accident, the Top Gear star has admitted.

The 37-year-old had to pass two hours of complicated mental tests before he won back his licence.

He tells the Radio Times magazine: "They were worried about flashbacks. I was like ’hang on, if I was strapped into a jet car on a runway maybe’."

The star says he still worries that the accident, in which he suffered brain injuries in the area that controls personality, could make him a different person.

But he adds: "I ignore them and hope they’ll f*** off."

The presenter was filming a stunt for Top Gear when he crashed a jet-powered dragster at 288mph in September.

But the father-of-two left hospital just five weeks after the high-speed accident.

Pictures of the dramatic crash are being broadcast in the first episode of the new series of the BBC2 motoring show on Sunday.

He tells the magazine: "People ask ’what’s it really like?’ and you take a big breath to tell them.

"And then they’re gone. Because it’s all rather boring really. It was very touching when people wrote in, but I think now I just want to get on with the job."

First photos of Hammond crash - Jan 18 2007
The first pictures of the dramatic crash which nearly cost Top Gear’s Richard Hammond his life have been published.

The presenter, nicknamed the Hamster, had a miraculous escape when he crashed a jet-powered dragster at 288mph while filming a stunt for the programme in September.

The photographs - featured in the new issue of Top Gear magazine - show a tyre bursting before the dragster skids and then flips over.

Although the Hamster has little recollection of the crash, he has tried to imagine what happened.

He said: "I will have taken a few deep breaths on the start line as the engine roared and my thumb hovered over the afterburner switch.

"Then I will have hit it and 10,000 horsepower will have hurled me towards the horizon and up to 280mph. The rest is, I’m afraid, history."

He suffered brain injuries when he crashed the Vampire jet car at Elvington airfield in York in September as he attempted to break the British land speed record.