Over the years Top Gear has had its fair share of daring moments, with the presenters taking on all sorts of incredibly risky challenges.

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One particularly perilous task in the upcoming series of the hit show sees hosts Paddy McGuinness, Freddie Flintoff and Chris Harris attempt a "Wall of Death" - in which they have to drive vertically at 50mph on a massive circular wall.

And McGuinness joked that the challenge was so dangerous that all three presenters almost died in the process.

"This particular series we all nearly died when we did the wall of death," he told RadioTimes.com and other press at a live streamed Q&A ahead of the new series.

He continued: "The nature with the three of us is we are competitive but we also push each other and you'll see on the wall of death we're all encouraging each other and no one wants to see anyone getting injured- but yeah that is a very, very, very risky episode."

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Fellow host Chris Harris echoed McGuinness' sentiments - but admitted that life threatening situations are just part and parcel of what to expect from the Top Gear presenting gig.

"Sometimes in the heat of the moment when you're a bit adrenalised you're not aware of how big an impact you take, and you look back and you see how much you got thrown around inside the car," he said.

"But all is fair in love and war... if we weren't nearly killing ourselves we wouldn't be doing our jobs properly!"

Given the dangers involved, you might think that the families of the presenters would struggle knowing about what could potentially go wrong.

But according to the three hosts, they have a clever way around that problem - they simply don't tell their nearest and dearest the nature of the challenges until after they're completed.

"Some of the stuff that we talk about when we're lining up for filming, we tend not to tell our immediate family too much about it," McGuinness explained.

"Because I think naturally they're going to get worried, and if they worried it puts a little seed of doubt in your mind as well and you talk yourself out of it.

"There's not any underhanded reason we don't tell them - I think it's just to keep them happy and keep us in the right frame of mind!"

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Top Gear returns for series 29 on Sunday 4th October on BBC One. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV guide.

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