Chapter Text
When Richard Hammond broke the internet.
They had had to do publicity before, for their various books, for the live shows, but they had never had to promote a completely new show. And so, in between filming and setting up the tent, they were doing lots and lots of interviews in the lead up to the show’s launch date. Some they did as a three but they ended up doing more separately.
Richard volunteered to do one for Buzzfeed, a website his daughters seemed to be on all the time, but he barely even looked at. He scrolled through the front page of their website, it seemed to be mostly personality quizzes and listicles. He wondered if it would be worth them sponsoring a ‘which Grand Tour presenter are you?’ personality quiz. So as a result, when he arrived at the buzzfeed offices in Los Angeles, he wasn’t expecting anything other than the standard, fluffy, promo interview that he had done a thousand times before. He was getting quite tired of them by now.
The first clue he had that it wouldn’t be a standard interview was when he walked into an empty studio space and there was no chair. Wondering if it was a standing interview, or something he decided to ask.
“Where do you want me?” He asked.
“If you just sit on the floor and make yourself comfortable.” The director said.
Richard blinked.
“The floor?”
“Yes, on the floor, and we’ll adjust the lighting and get checks in.” The answer didn’t seem to be changing so Richard made himself comfortable seated on the floor, and politely waited through the lighting adjustment and the make-up artist adding just a little powder.
As soon as that had happened the director stepped in again.
“We’re going for action, and as soon as we’ve called that, can you just introduce yourself, say you’re with buzzfeed, and just say that you’re going to speak about your new show.”
Richard noticed there was no interviewer in shot, but before he had a chance to ask the question, the cameras started, a slate was clacking and the director was calling action.
“Hello, my name is Richard Hammond and I’m here with buzzfeed to tell you all about my new Amazon Prime show, The Grand Tour.”
Then someone approached with a couple of wicker baskets, and then they were handing out a selection of adorable kittens, some of which were handed to Richard.
Richard smiled with delight at the baby animals and he gently cradled a couple, one of which quickly climbed his shoulder and started nuzzling in his beard.
It was the most fun promo interview he had ever done. He was trying to answer the questions but he kept getting distracted by the kittens. He had them chasing the fluffy toy. Having not really listened to the next question, he had an idea, and was grouping five of the kittens at one end, trying to hold their attention on the toy.
“Ready,” he said to the camera, “we’re going to have a drag race and see which kitten is the fastest!” Twitching the toy enough to hold the cats’ attention, he then dragged it quickly, just over a meter away from the kittens. Three of the five chased it, and it was the little tortoiseshell who one.
Richard scooped up the champion lion king style.
“There she is, the fastest buzzfeed kitten is a girl. You know she’s a girl because you don’t get male tortoiseshell cats.” He then snuggled her into his chest, letting her chase his finger.
Then there was another question.
At one point he tried to pluck a kitten from his shoulder, but it was a determined little thing who had attached its claws quite firmly into his waistcoat.
“Ah, okay.” He said. “So if I just lean back, and get you closer to the ground, maybe you’ll just walk off?”
At which point the director asked him to hold for a second, so he could get a camera around the side. Richard held in place, gently stroking the top of the kitten's head until they were ready.
“Okay, ready?” He asked the kitten who was looking a little bit scared, before gently leaning back until he was lying on the floor.
The kitten then decided instead of getting off that it would walk further into the middle of Richard’s chest and go to sleep.
“Wait, no, that’s not what I meant.” Richard said, only for three or four more kittens to decide he looked like a great thing to climb on and join their friend.
With one cat standing at the top of his chest he raised his head to look at him. The cat stretched out its front paws to balance them on his nose and he grinned again.
“I suppose, I’m just going to do the rest of the interview from down here then.” He said.
When he made it back to the house they were renting for the duration of the Los Angeles shoot James noticed his mood.
“You’re not normally that cheery after a promo interview, they’re a bit of a grind.”
“This was quite a fun one, they got out a basket of kittens.”
“Really?” James asked, but didn’t think anything further about it until two weeks later when the interview was released.
James, Jeremy and Andy were having breakfast at a rented house in another country, before starting filming that day, and Richard was at the gym when they noticed it. They were so busy getting the new show sorted out that they didn’t usually look back on promo interviews once they had done them, they were all professionals after all, and unless there was a backlash against something that one of them (usually Jeremy) had said, they didn’t dwell. But at eight in the morning, just over a week before their first episode was due to be released, Richard Hammond was trending on twitter.
Not only trending, but he was the eighth most trending topic worldwide, with The Grand Tour trending at number fifteen.
Jeremy noticed first, and immediately assumed that Richard had said something silly in his interview and was being pilloried for it, that was the way one of them usually ended up trending. So he immediately pulled up the video on his tablet, and set it up so the three of them could watch, while scrolling down through the responses on his phone.
It was pretty much universally positive. And the video was truly adorable.
They laughed out loud when he set up the drag race, and his small, playful “That’s not gone well, help!” When he was lying on his back with the kittens swarming him.
Screenshots taken from the interview, the most popular being him grinning like an idiot looking up at the kitten with its paws on his nose.
They had wanted positive press, but hadn’t anticipated a whole new generation of teenage girls manifesting crushes on their colleague.
They watched the video a couple of times, and Jeremy quote tweeted a few of the responses, usually deriding the person’s taste for finding Hammond ‘adorable’. Or pointing out how medically inadvisable it was to watch something that would make someone’s ‘ovaries explode’.
As they were wrapping up breakfast, Richard appeared, freshly showered after his workout, and noticed their stares.
“Did something happen?” He asked, with no idea about the new topic of ribbing he was about to endure.