Former Top Gear host Richard Hammond has been fined by a UK court after he was caught speeding twice in the space of three weeks while driving his luxury cars.
The 56-year-old TV presenter was at the wheel of a Porsche when he broke the speed limit on December 2 last year, and he was caught out again just 20 days later while driving a Bentley.
West Mercia Police brought two prosecutions against Hammond, putting forward the speed camera images of him driving the cars in Herefordshire to prove the offences.
Court papers also reveal how police spent weeks sending letters to Hammond’s multimillion-pound portfolio of homes in a bid to track him down.
The presenter, who hosted Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and James May between 2002 and 2015 before the trio launched The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, pleaded guilty through his lawyers to two charges of speeding.
At Telford Magistrates’ Court last week, he was handed seven penalty points for his licence.
Magistrate Ann Minton ordered him to pay a total of $A3400, comprising two fines of 333 pounds and 666 pounds, 240 pounds in costs and victim surcharges totalling 532 pounds.
Hammond, nicknamed The Hamster by his TV co-stars, nearly died in a 515km/h jet car crash in 2006 while filming Top Gear, and he and Clarkson received a three-month driving ban in France in 2013 after they were caught speeding while making an episode of the show.
Documents from his court case show Hammond was caught out by a police officer with a handheld speed camera at just before 1pm on December 2.
His Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo was clocked at 68mph in a 50mph limit (109km/h in an 80km/h limit) on the A40 in Pencraig, Herefordshire.
At 11.45am on December 22, Hammond’s Bentley Continental GT was speeding at 82mph in a 70mph limit on the A50 Rudhall Overbridge in Herefordshire.
Police sent speeding tickets to a Grade II* listed Herefordshire castle bought by Hammond in 2012 and a 1-million-pound farm estate near Hereford but the letters were returned marked as “addressee gone away”.
Eventually they tracked him down to his 2-million-pound mansion near Abergavenny in Wales where it was noted more than 30 vehicles are currently registered.
Police also set out in court papers that Hammond had been accused of another driving offence in August last year.
Hammond was prosecuted for two offences of speeding and two further allegations that he had ignored the police letters and failed to identify himself as the guilty driver.
In a letter to the court, the presenter’s solicitor pleaded guilty to the speeding charges and denied the other two offences, writing: “He replied identifying himself as the driver. He sent the reply by First Class post. He posted the reply himself.”
The police force opted to withdraw those extra charges, as Hammond was prosecuted and convicted for the speeding offences in the Single Justice Procedure – a fast-track court process which allows magistrates to sit behind closed doors to deal with low level criminal cases.
He was among 39 defendants who were convicted of driving offences during the court session on July 22.
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