Whilst he had already gained some attention by hosting Sky One's "Brainiac: Science Abuse" and BBC 2's "Top Gear", what really brought Richard Hammond to the public's attention was a serious crash whilst driving a jet propelled car whilst filming the latter back in 2006. The outpouring of public support, both emotional and financial surprised even him and the book he and his wife Mindy wrote about the accident and his recovery was the best selling non-fiction book of 2007.

There are five major stories in the book, three dealing with "Top Gear" challenges, one with the 2007 floods and one with another show he recorded. The "Top Gear" challenges are ones any fan may be familiar with; recent ones involving the Polar expedition, the drive across Botswana and trying to build an amphibious vehicle to cross the Channel to France. The others are about the aforementioned story with the floods and meeting one of his idols, Evel Knievel, to film a documentary about his life. If any of these things are new to you, particularly the "Top Gear" ones, this may not be the book for you, as Hammond does assume you're familiar with the show and these challenges in particular.

This makes the whole experience of reading Hammond's books like being in the pub with a mate telling you about something he's just been up to. The whole thing reads as if you've just seen him and said "Hello, mate, not seen you in ages. What have you been up to?" His last book felt the same way, even with the more serious subject matter. Here, where's he off filming and generally having a lot of fun, it's an even more enjoyable read and the tone of his writing fits in beautifully with some of the strange things he's getting up to. I laughed out loud several times whilst reading "As You Do" and it's never at Hammond, always with him.

For fans of the man, rather than the show, there are a couple of parts where not being a regular "Top Gear" viewer doesn't matter. Unfortunately, these come quite late in the book and whilst they give a little more of an insight into the man that Hammond is, there's little in comparison to his "Top Gear" musings and even I, as a fan of the show, would have liked more of this kind of thing. I enjoyed the earlier sections, but having watched "Top Gear" avidly for several years, a lot of what he was talking about was familiar, merely presented from a different angle. It wasn't quite new information, it was just old information presented with a slightly different slant and in the case of the Polar Expedition, which took up three chapters, perhaps a little too much about one thing where a wider range of stories may have been more interesting. There were also points I thought he could have elaborated on, as he mentions spending too much money bringing Oliver home from Botswana, but never told the story of how that came to pass, which I thought would have been interesting to know about.