Is Clarkson gearing up to pay £10m for divorce?
AT THE end of a year in which he ‘almost died’ after being struck down with pneumonia, does Jeremy Clarkson have exciting plans for 2018?
I ask because the irrepressible petrolhead is said to be close to agreeing a financial settlement with his estranged wife, Frances, that would leave him free to marry his glamorous actress girlfriend, Lisa Hogan, 46.
‘Things are finally starting to move,’ one of his friends tells me. Clarkson, 57, has been estranged from 56-year- old Frances since 2011 but the couple have never formalised their separation.
In a sign that she is consigning Clarkson to the past, the Army major’s daughter is now using her maiden name, Frances Cain, on social media. Matters are greatly complicated for the couple, who tied the knot in 1993 and have three children, by the fact that amiable Frances was working as Clarkson’s manager as well as being his wife.
In 2014, The Grand Tour presenter described it as ‘a difficult divorce’.
His pal suggests the settlement is likely to be more than £10 million.
Clarkson’s first wife, Alex Hall, urged Frances to take him to the cleaners. Miss Hall, who divorced him in 1989 after a six- month marriage, said Frances was the secret to his success and had ‘done her penance’.
Speaking in 2014, Miss Hall said: ‘It is her hard work that has made him into the idol he is today.
‘Jeremy is the frontman, but behind the scenes she was the swan paddling frantically beneath the surface. So she deserves every penny she gets – she worked for it.’ Clarkson spent more than a week in hospital after contracting pneumonia while on holiday in Majorca.
He later said he had spent ‘three nights spasming in his bed’ before a doctor on the Spanish island sent him for tests.
He said the doctor told him, “If you don’t do as I say you will die.” ’
His relationship with Miss Hogan, whom he began courting a year ago, has become increasingly serious. The Irish mother- of- three was ‘discovered’ in the early Nineties by John Cleese, who gave her a minor role in his film Fierce Creatures.
She was previously married to Steven Bentinck, nephew of Europe’s greatest art collector, the late Baron Heini Thyssen.
Clarkson and Miss Cain declined to comment.