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CLARKSON’S FARM

The charming 2021 Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm showed us a softer side of opinionated petrolhead Jeremy Clarkson. As a hapless novice farmer he wrestled with troublesome tractors and was routinely humbled by his skilled young farmhand Kaleb Cooper.

But as the series returns for a second run, a dark cloud hovers over Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm. The show has reportedly been cancelled after next year’s third series, following a rant about the Duchess of Sussex written by Clarkson for a newspaper column in December. So Clarkson (right) should make hay while the sun shines on this diverting series, showing the TV presenter’s attempts to make his 1,000-acre Oxfordshire estate profitable. This series he suffers setbacks while trying to move into cattle farming and open a restaurant on site. Prepare to be amused by him grappling with cows and a recalcitrant county council.

Clarkson, 62, is gratified by fans’ response to the show, not least because it shows how challenging rural life can be. ‘It’s been an extraordinary thing,’ he says. ‘The farm is visited now by Americans, Germans, Finns, South Africans, Dutch – everyone all over the world. They’ve gone, “Wow, it’s amazing where our food comes from.”’

The new series sees him diversify into cattle farming to improve on his first year’s measly £144 profit. But it doesn’t go as planned... ‘I don’t know anything about cow farming,’ Clarkson admits. ‘Literally nothing at all. It’s been a year of total disasters on the cow front. It was a mad thing to have done.’

That wasn’t the only loss he suffered while making series two – he had a kitchen accident while making crisps. ‘I cut half of my thumb off, but it’s all been sewn back on again now,’ he says. ‘It’s interesting that the only proper injury I’ve sustained in farming was from cooking. Which just goes to show that Gordon Ramsay’s job is more dangerous than mine.’

The people trying to make a

It’s been a year of disasters. I don’t know anything about cow farming, it was a mad thing to have done

success of the farm – including Kaleb and Clarkson’s partner Lisa Hogan – are back this series trying to help him out as he makes blunder after blunder. It shows rural life as bucolic but also taxing, he admits.

‘There have been countryside programmes before, of course, but they tend to be quite twee,’ he says. ‘I really like Kate Humble and people who do that kind of thing, so I don’t want to have a go, but people think of the countryside as a newborn lamb and fresh straw in a lovely old barn. And I think my programme has shown the reality.’