I’m Jeremy’s babysitter
He was branded a ‘rural halfwit’ on Clarkson’s Farm – now he’s an unlikely sex symbol. Here Kaleb Cooper gives his boss some welly...
The first encounter that farmer Kaleb Cooper had with Jeremy Clarkson saw him lambasted by the irascible Grand Tour star for driving his tractor too fast down a lane. A bit rich, you might think, coming from TV’s original petrolhead presenter. But since then Kaleb has famously become Jeremy’s fall guy in an unlikely double act that’s been a big part of the reason Clarkson’s Farm, which follows Jeremy’s attempts to manage his own 1,000acre plot after his previous farmer retired, has been such a hit on Amazon Prime Video.
‘Before Jeremy took the farm on himself he used to come out and roar, “Can you stop driving too fast in that tractor? My cat runs around here and if you run my cat over...”’ recalls Kaleb, rolling his eyes at the irony of his boss’s preposterous first purchase of an oversized top-ofthe-range Lamborghini tractor.
Set on Jeremy’s Cotswolds farm Diddly Squat, the first series follows his hapless attempts to turn his arable land into a profitable working farm. At the heart of the series is the constant battle of wits between natural-born local farmer Kaleb, a cheery-faced, gingerbearded 22-year-old, and his new boss with his harebrained ideas.
Local lad Kaleb has never been afraid to stand up to Clarkson, telling him off for failing to plant crops in a straight line, building a barn that’s too small and not organising transport for harvested grain when rain threatens to destroy their crop. Insults fly, with Kaleb branding Clarkson a ‘f***ing idiot’ and Jeremy calling Kaleb a ‘rural halfwit’. It makes for compelling TV, and filming for the hotly anticipated second series has reportedly finished. ‘There are even more ferocious fights coming,’ promises Kaleb, now 24. ‘The problem is that Jeremy’s now got a little knowledge about farming and that is very, very dangerous. But I’m not scared of him because I know what I’m doing.’
In the meantime, viewers can enjoy Kaleb’s quirky but commonsense take on life in his hilarious new book The World According To Kaleb. His wise words may fall on deaf ears in the show, but beneath the bickering there’s a genuine friendship and mutual respect. ‘Jeremy’s a complete pain in the butt when it comes to farming, but when it comes to television the roles are reversed,’ says Kaleb, who as well as running the farm is also responsible for helping set up the TV scenes. ‘He knows what he’s doing and I don’t. People might be surprised by this, but TV-wise he’s a hero to me. The production team may say, “Let’s film the drilling”, but then the tractor might break down so we have to try to lift the drill off the back of it. Or Jeremy gets stuck, or a cow gets out, or the sheep get out. You never know what’s going to happen next.’
Kaleb is embracing his newfound fame but the book details how he’s trying to keep his feet on the ground. He’s happiest at the wheel of a tractor in the middle of a field, which is where he ‘wrote’ his book, recording his wry and witty observations into a dictaphone as he trundled along.
He doesn’t like change. A recent holiday with his partner Taya, who he met at school and is the mother of his 18-month-old son Oscar, was to a hotel 18 miles from home. He never watched TV before he was on it and he’d never read a book before he wrote his own. A trip to nearby Oxford to record the audio version of his book ended in a claustrophobic attack in the studio and an early departure.
One of the happiest outcomes of his fame is that he’s become a ‘farm-fluencer’, giving advice to a new generation who want to get into agriculture. He does this via social media and has more Instagram followers than many stars.
He’s also mobbed wherever he goes. ‘The other day, out of nowhere, a lady showed me her chest,’ he writes in the book. ‘That never used to happen before I was famous, and frankly I’m not that keen on it now. Unsolicited nudity is a celebrity perk I could do without.
‘I think I prefer it when people just freeze in shock when they see me. Or fall over, like someone did the other day just from looking at me. I laughed, but I also helped her up. I like helping people. That’s what I’m a celebrity for: helping Jeremy do all the things he doesn’t know how to do.
‘I’m not so much a celebrity as a celebrity babysitter.’
Kaleb may be called a ‘moron’ by Jeremy but he’s had his eye on the prize since he was a teenager. He started working on a dairy farm after school, ‘shovelling s***’. For his 13th birthday his mum bought him three chickens and he sold their eggs door to door. ‘I was going through a rough time as my mum and dad split up, so Mum got me the chickens as she knew I wanted to be a farmer. I worked out I could produce an egg for 10p and sell them for 25p. Three months later I had 450 chickens.’
At 14 he bought three sheep, bred them, then had the lambs slaughtered and sold the meat on his egg round too. By the time he was 15
THE OTHER DAY, OUT OF NOWHERE, A LADY SHOWED ME HER CHEST
IF IT’S A SUNDAY AND YOUR COW HAS HURT ITS HIP, YOU JUST HAVE TO SORT IT
he’d saved up £5,500 – enough to buy his first tractor. After agricultural college he set up his own business, which provides farm services and now employs his brother Kieron and best friend Jack.
He also owns five-and-a-half acres himself and rents 250 acres to grow grass that he sells as hay bales for events. But his dream is to own his own farm, and it sounds like it won’t be too long before that’s realised.
‘I never relax and I feel guilty when I’m not working,’ he says. ‘You have to be a grafter in this business. It can be a Sunday afternoon but if your cow has fallen over and hurt its hip you’ve just got to sort it, or your tractor’s broken down in the middle of a field you’ve got to sort it.’
And he doesn’t need any help from Clarkson!
The World According To Kaleb is out now (Quercus, €19.40).