Flintoff (Disney+) An expression of gaunt horror trembles in Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s eyes when he talks, as if he can see something invisible to everyone else. The cricket legend does not hold back, in this landmark Disney+ documentary, describing his horrific Top Gear crash in detail for the first time, and how his lightning reactions saved his life. ‘It’s a funny thing, rolling a car,’ he says, ‘because everything slows down. It’s so weird. When you play cricket, you get 0.4 of a second to make your mind up what shot you’re gonna play. ‘And as the car started going over, I looked at the ground, and I knew, if I get hit here, on this side of my head, I’m gonna break my neck. If I get hit on the temple, I’m dead. ‘The best chance is to go face down.’ He’s talking softly, with the traumatic memory written as deeply across his face as the scars. There’s no sense of relish or bragging. Flintoff, who disappeared from the public eye for almost a year after the accident, which occurred while filming in late 2022, is reliving the terror as he recounts it. ‘I thought I was dead. I still live it every day, it’s a movie in my head. Because after the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. ‘This sounds awful: part of me wishes I’d been killed,’ he adds, close to tears. ‘Part of me thinks, I wish I’d have died. I didn’t want to kill myself. I won’t mistake the two things. ‘But I was thinking, this [death] would have been so much easier. Now, I tried to take the attitude, you know what, the sun will come up tomorrow and then my kids will still give me a hug.’ This 95-minute film by director John Dower, who interviews Flintoff with sensitivity and persistence, makes searing viewing – and not only because of the graphic close-ups of the star’s hideous injuries in the aftermath of the crash. He was test-driving an open-top Morgan Super 3, a notoriously unstable vehicle with two wheels at the front and only one at the back of its canoe-like body, at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, when the car tipped over on a bend, at around 45mph. Reportedly, he had no seat belt. ‘They were showing me how to get the car going sideways,’ he says. Later in the documentary, he admits that during his TV career he frequently sought ways to replicate the adrenaline buzz he used to get while playing international cricket. Top Gear was one of BBC1’s most watched primetime shows, until it was suspended indefinitely following Flintoff’s crash. Without laying the blame explicitly on the BBC, he makes it plain that he was allowed to put his life at risk for the sake of ratings. ‘I think that’s the danger TV falls into,’ he says, a note of bitterness and anger creeping into his voice. ‘Everyone wants more, everybody wants that thing that nobody’s seen before, everybody wants that bigger stunt. ‘Let’s have that near miss because then that’ll get viewers. Everything’s about viewers. Always, always. And I should have been cleverer on this because I learnt this in sport as well. With all the injuries and all the injections and all the times I got sent out on a cricket field and [was] just treated like a piece of meat. ‘That’s TV and sport, I think that’s where it’s quite similar. You’re just a commodity, you’re just a piece of meat.’ Dower asks whether he still talks to his Top Gear co-presenters, racing driver Chris Harris and comedian Paddy McGuinness. Picking his words carefully, Flintoff says, ‘We’ve been in contact.’ He has met Harris: ‘It was really nice to see him. I got a bit upset.’ But he’s concerned that renewing their friendship will trigger too many difficult memories. ‘What happened gets dragged up enough in my own head without adding to that.’ His vulnerability and struggles with depression are painfully exposed. ‘I’ve got PTSD and I get anxious,’ he says. ‘For periods of time I just find myself crying for no particular reason.’ Comedian Jack Whitehall, a friend for years, describes him as ‘fragile’ and it’s evident that the people around Flintoff are protecting him as much as possible. His wife Rachael describes how she tried to hide the extent of his injuries from him, when she saw him for the first time in hospital, after his initial five-hour operation: ‘I totally pulled myself together and I didn’t cry. I just said it’s fine. You’re gonna be OK. Can’t believe how amazing you look. ‘Before I got home, I did call the kids and said to them, “You’ve got to be as strong as you’ve ever been. I don’t want you to look shocked and horrified, because that’s going to knock him.” Andrew doesn’t know I’ve ever done that.’ The injuries were among the worst his oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Jahrad Haq, had ever seen. His nose was ripped open, and parts of his lips were completely scraped away. The nerve damage means that, however good the reconstruction work has been, he may never regain feeling in parts of his face, and his speech is sometimes slurred as a consequence. Flintoff compares the multiple surgeries to having his features soldered back together: ‘Bit of a f***ing mess, really.’ And with his characteristic humour, he adds, ‘Don’t know if they’ll want that on Disney. Never heard Mickey Mouse swear.’ He remembers every instant of the crash, and says the replays in his head are so vivid that the memory feels as though it’s actually happening. Even when he’s asleep, he relives it in his nightmares. After being dragged headfirst along the tarmac for 50 metres, he felt the car hit the grass verge and flip again. ‘I thought I was dead, because I was conscious but I couldn’t see anything. I was thinking, “Is that it?”’ In fact, his helmet had slipped over his eyes. As he pushed it back, his vision filled with blood. After leaving hospital, he says, he was ‘afraid to step outside’ for months. In one of the most affecting moments of the film, Flintoff describes how his youngest son, then three-and-a-half, was afraid to come near him because his face was so damaged: ‘That was heartbreaking.’ He also talks in depth for the first time about his struggles with alcohol and the eating disorder bulimia, at the height of his cricketing career. Flintoff was the superhero of the England team that won the Ashes in 2005 and 2009, a towering batsman slashing balls into the crowd, and a demon bowler. But he was boozing heavily from the age of 17, so much so that his teammates used to swap over during sessions, drinking in shifts to keep up with him. Former England captain Michael Vaughan tells how Flintoff was famous for ‘necking’ bottles of wine in one go – and for his party trick, cramming five bottles of beer into his mouth and swallowing the contents. Drinking hard, Flintoff piled weight on. Resentful at the headlines this provoked, he turned on the Press, sarcastically calling himself ‘a fat lad’ in one post-match interview. Behind the scenes, he forced himself to lose more than 20lb by throwing up every meal. His alcohol abuse came to a head in the West Indies during the World Cup in 2007 when, in a drunken 4am escapade, he had to be rescued from the sea after falling out of a pedalo. The documentary does not delve into how he quit drinking, nor whether he was tempted to start again after the crash. It hints that he may be finished with television presenting for good, preferring to work as a cricket coach, though it also makes no mention of his BBC1 series Field Of Dreams. The show, in which he mentors underprivileged boys from his home town, Preston in Lancashire, and introduces them to cricket, has been renewed for a third season. Instead, the emphasis is on how the support of his wife and his love for sport has helped him rebuild his life. In the documentary’s last scene, he’s enjoying a round of golf and bantering with mates. This is the Disney version, after all. And surely the story of this great English sporting hero deserves a happy ending. Flintoff will be released on Disney+ tomorrow