‘Everybody told me not to go into farming’
Jeremy Clarkson on his new role on the farm, run smoothly beef with his neighbours and how things without James May and Richard Hammond
When Jeremy Clarkson bought a 1,000-acre farm in the English countryside in 2008, he didn’t take into consideration that he knew nothing about farming.
Despite living at the Oxfordshire property for over a decade, the star left the day-to-day running of Diddly Squat to a qualified farmer.
But when that farmer retired, the Grand Tour presenter, 61, decided to take a shot at running the show himself.
Luckily for us, Jeremy invited the cameras along to witness the carnage. From electrocuting himself to mishaps with tractors and seeds, the usually selfassured star quickly finds himself out of his depth on the show that’s much more than just
“The Grand Tour meets farming”.
Here, Jeremy reveals that he couldn’t do it all without his girlfriend, Lisa Hogan, and why he’ll never call himself a farmer…
Hi Jeremy! You’ve lived on this farm for many years, but how interested were you in running it?
Oh, not at all, not even slightly! We had it for all sorts of inheritance tax reasons, and I was very busy with writing newspaper columns. There was Top Gear to start with and then latterly The Grand
Tour, as well as other projects and shows. The farm made no money but it didn’t cost any money, it was just a nice thing to have. It was run by a chap from the village who was a farmer, and then when he was retiring, I suddenly thought, “I can do that.”
What have you learnt about yourself?
That I’m not a farmer, and never will be! I do enjoy the process of farming, it was fun and still is. When you get rid of James [May] and Richard [Hammond], it’s amazing how smoothly things run.
And Lisa has helped you hugely…
She works her socks off, but she’s even less of a country girl than I am – though she’ll probably say different. She was born in Dublin and has lived in
Switzerland, Majorca, and London… and yet there she is with her filthy Dr Martens, stomping around, running that farm shop and loving it.
You say on the show, “People told me not to do it.” Who told you not to do it and why?
Literally everybody! Because farming is a vocation. you either need to be born into it or you need to go to agricultural college and learn how to do it. you can’t just say, “I’m going to do farming.” I think John Humphrys tried to do farming. It lasted a year, and by his own admission he hated it. It was too difficult – and it is phenomenally difficult! Has the farm shop been a big success?
It’s doing really well. A handful of locals didn’t like having a farm shop nearby, which I can’t quite understand. I mean, if we’d built a nuclear power station I could understand their concerns, but not a tiny farm shop. I’m not quite sure what their beef is, but the people from further afield seem to like it. They like the milk and the eggs, and it’s good for local farmers to sell produce without going through a middleman or a supermarket. One woman makes sausage rolls and Scotch eggs, so she’s got somewhere to sell them now. It’s great!
You seemed fairly conflicted when you had to take the pigs to slaughter, though not quite enough to turn you vegetarian… Oh, never! I’m never going to be a vegetarian. I’ve got pigs now, though, and they’re very endearing, so it’s going to be quite tricky eating them.
Clarkson’s Farm is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video now