Why life is gritty for Clarkson

LIFE on his Diddly Squat farm is not for the squeamish, warns Jeremy Clarkson.

‘Farming on television has been portrayed as fresh straw, fluffy lambs, agreeable calves: a bit like Babe. I had it in my head that farming was much dirtier and harder, and I always wanted to show it like it actually is,’ he said ahead of the new series of Clarkson’s Farm.

‘ Farming doesn’t have many happy endings, as we’ve discovered. We want to show everybody what real farming is.’

Scenes showing Clarkson’s sows firing out their newborns ‘ like machine guns’ may not be for the faint-hearted.

▪ PARLIAMENTARY sartorial update: black brogues are out and trainers are in. Minister Simon Hoare was at the Commons despatch box this week wearing black sports shoes. Hoare, a minor figure in the local government department, does not look a remotely sporty figure. He wore the shoes with a black suit. The combination was not easy on the eye.

▪ CLARE BALDING had some barking advice for Cambridge University students when she visited her alma mater this weekend.

The broadcaster, 53, told them they ‘should think like a dog’ to achieve happiness in life as ‘there will always be a person to wag your tail’. Her cryptic words are scribbled across a blackboard in the bar of the Cambridge Union Society.

Crufts presenter Balding is a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Her latest book is Isle Of Dogs: My Canine Adventure Through Britain.

▪ WHILE Lily Allen says having children ‘totally ruined’ her pop music career, comic Sara Pascoe thinks motherhood is a gift to women in her trade. ‘Everyone I know who’s had children, all the women I know who do comedy, have got better,’ says Sara, who has two young sons with her husband, comedian Steen Raskopoulos. ‘[Having children] made comedy less important — it made them better at it. Comedy isn’t important, it’s throwaway, it’s inconsequential — don’t overthink it.’