Fans of Top Gear have long been familiar with Richard Hammond. But how well do you really know him? After all, he confides, he’s merely a host in that capacity. But now with the BBC America series Richard Hammond’s Crash Course, the veil is dropped. As he attempts to “master” some iconic American jobs, we see Hammond, the man, for better – and worse.

“I do a lot of factual shows where I’m talking about natural history or cars or whatever else and I’m actually presenting them,” said Hammond. “That’s what I’m doing. I present those facts to the audience. This is the first and only time I’ve ever really kind of been able to reveal anything of myself. That’s not to say it’s all good. Mostly I’m a knobby-kneed British coward.”

Chalk up that last self-assessment to British modesty. While he may reveal his greatest fears – heights, performing to a crowd – as he trains to become a stuntman, learns the ropes as a cowboy or tries his hat as a stand-up comedian, Hammond doesn’t back down from any challenges the production team throws his way. And it does all make for amusing television.

Here’s more of our chat with Richard Hammond...

How did you choose the jobs that you were tasked with learning?

We cast around for jobs that are kind of typically American. So I was a cattle rancher, which is typical kind of as far as the rest of us around the world are concerned.

And the production team had to make me uncomfortable, so we had a lot of conversations saying, “What aren’t you very good at, Richard?” Well heights, so there’s the stuntman doing a fall off a bridge. I said lots of things but I never confessed my biggest fear is doing stand-up comedy. And the moment they suggested it, from my huge silence they knew they’d got me, and I knew I had no choice. I was doomed. I was going to find myself on a stage.

Was there any job that surprised you as being more difficult or frightening than you’d anticipated?

The research team at Worldwide Productions worked very hard to make sure they’re all briefed on everything so there’d be no horrific surprises or if there were, they knew they were coming. But there were a few, like in the paddleboarding one – which is an unusual thing to do but we wanted to do a sport and we figured that was quite an unusual one. We were all very surprised when they set off because it was a downwind race along Hood River [in Oregon], which is a ferocious stretch of water. I’m from Birmingham in England – which is about as far as you can get from the sea in our country – and yet I found myself there standing on a surfboard with a paddle in this stupid pair of shorts and a T-shirt in a swell of waves that looked to me from where I was standing like The Perfect Storm movie with [George] Clooney. And I thought, “Oh God, today I die.” That was a massive surprise.

In the first episode where you train as a stuntman, you rather look like a pro. What’s been your proudest achievement so far on Crash Course?

Well, just surviving it … There was a lot of fear, a lot of embarrassment. I am British after all, so I made a fool of myself and felt suitably embarrassed a lot of the time. I was just watching an early cut of the one where I’m an American bullfighter and I was terrified watching it again because there is a moment when the bull and I had very nearly a nasty coming together. But, probably, the most consistently frightening is maybe the one that’s the premiere, which is when I was a stuntman in L.A. Because, naturally, everything they do tends to be terrifying.

Driving fast cars, flying helicopters, the challenges we see in Crash Course … you must an adrenaline junkie…

Yes, I suppose I am an adrenaline junkie. I like to do exciting things. I think we all are in our own ways, just that excitement comes in different form. It might be flying a stunt helicopter. It might be doing a jigsaw puzzle. But we all get our own hits however we get them. I do consider myself quite a cautious man because, generally, they’re calculated risks that I take. I don’t want to risk throwing my life away for work or for anything else.

Is there anything that you’d still like to do?

Oh, yes of course, there is loads and loads and loads. I’d like to play a big arena in a band. I’d like to master flying fixed-wing aircraft. I fly a helicopter but I don’t fly fixed wing. There’s an awful lot of stuff yet to do. I haven’t finished.

I think what’s great about the whole season is some of these jobs – I’m thinking of the cattle ranching one and maybe even stuntman – are things a lot of people have an idle dream of doing. To suddenly be plunged in and doing them for real rather changes it. And there’s always a danger, you know, the reality doesn’t hold up against the dream. But it’s a real surprise when you find yourself turning up for your day’s work dressed as a cowboy. I’m a 42-year-old man. I couldn’t wait to get on a cowboy hat and a pair of boots. But then actually going to work and spending all day in the saddle and realizing how hard these guys work, how skilled they are … it’s astonishing. They don’t have to dream this. They do it for real. So that was a surprise, but what a wonderful experience.

Season two of Richard Hammond’s Crash Course premieres tonight, Monday, October 22 at 10/9c on BBC AMERICA