Richard Hammond is stepping in front of the cameras for a cameo in Clarkson’s Farm.

The Grand Tour presenter appears to make an accidental debut on the fly-on-the-wall documentary series. In the series four trailer, Jeremy Clarkson tells him: “You know you are on the show.”

Hammond has been a fan of the Prime Video series since it first hit our TV screens in 2021. Four series in, the long-time friend of Clarkson is finally making an appearance on Clarkson’s Farm. Not only that but there will also be a pig named “Richard Ham” in his honour.

Playfully in the past, Clarkson has joked he has “banned” his long-time friend Hammond (and James May too) from starring on the farm show. “Not in a million years,” he told a fan on social media platform X about whether they would join the show. This “ban” later extended to his pub The Farmer’s Dog in the Cotswolds after Clarkson became a landlord last year.

In 2021, Hammond was questioned about Clarkson joking he had banned him from the farm show on social media. “I read that!” He said This Morning. “I was [like]… Oh.”

Not letting it dampen his enthusiasm, Hammond got excited about his “love” for Clarkson’s Farm. He said: “The key thing about the show, and you can tell when you watch it, is that it is a genuine passion. It’s not for effect and it’s not just for telly. It’s genuinely something he wanted to get to grips with, and that’s fantastic. That shines through. It wouldn’t be as convincing and as entertaining as it is if it weren’t true. That’s what’s at the heart of it.”

Watch Clarkson’s Farm series 4 trailer

In 2023, Hammond praised Clarkson’s Farm for being a “genuine” show. Making an appearance on This Morning, the former Top Gear star revealed his friend did the show because it was his true passion in life rather than just for TV.

“I think it’s, again, genuine. Our show has always worked together because we love our subject. You don’t have to, and we will argue about it, you don’t have to know or understand what the argument is.

“It’s just fun watching people argue about their passion and Jeremy’s farm show is the same. It’s a real thing, he loves it. It’s not done for telly, it’s something that he likes.”

Clarkson has a close friendship with Hammond and May off-screen after working together for more than 20 years.

The three of them forged unbreakable bonds on Top Gear. When Clarkson was sacked for punching a producer in 2015, Hammond and May quit the show. They took their talent to rival Prime Video to make new show The Grand Tour which ran for seven very successful years.

Despite calling it quits last year because they were getting “too old”, the trio have returned to TV with a spin off The Not Very Grand Tour: The Power And The Glory on Prime Video.

In 2024, Hammond shared what he had learned from working with Clarkson and May.

He told Yahoo UK: “Good and bad, we have learned a lot from each other. We’ve had an influence on each other because we spend an immense amount of time together when we’re travelling, when we’re filming. People often ask, ‘do you hang out a lot outside of work?’ well, back in the day, when we were making 14 shows a year, sometimes more on Top Gear, we never were apart, so yeah we have learned from each other.”

The fourth series of Clarkson’s Farm will launch globally on Prime Video 23 May.