Sometimes it takes one bloomin' great idiot, driving at over 300mph in a silly car on a runway, to bring out the best in people.

Top Gear presenter Richard 'Hamster' Hammond's near-fatal crash has resulted in, at the time of writing, a £75,000 boost for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance - which airlifted him to hospital.

A group of readers of the magazine Pistonheads decided, in the immediate aftermath of the crash, to set up an online donation page for the air ambulance which had ferried Hammond to safety.

Initially the fundraising target was set at the cost of one air ambulance flight - Hammond's. The amount raised currently stands at more than two hundred and twenty such flights.

In the words of Martin Eede, head of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance:

A massive thanks from everyone at YAA. To put it in perspective, at close of play on Friday we have carried another four patients with similar life threatening injuries (burns, heart attack, road traffic). So clearly, what you have achieved is already helping to save others!

[source: Just Giving - 'Get well soon Hamster']

My good friend Amy J alerted me to this.

"There's some gorgeous comments," she said, referring to the donation page, where you can write messages of goodwill.

"There was this one little boy who gave his £2.50 pocket money for the week, and a girl who gave her month's riding lessons money.

"And someone gave the amount they spend on hamster food... God knows what their hamster's going to eat now."

I'd ask my sister Alice if she'd donate her riding lessons money to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, but I don't think she's over the shock of Steve Irwin dying yet, let alone the Hamster risking life and limb.

To donate, please click here.