Jeremy Clarkson has admitted to the farming mistake that left him “ashamed” and his Clarkson’s Farm co-star Kaleb Cooper “in tears”.
The former Top Gear presenter, 66, took over operations of the Oxfordshire farm in 2019, naming it after what was then a lack of productivity until Cooper, 28, came on board as manager.
Fans have been given a behind-the-scenes look at the process through the Prime Video series Clarkson’s Farm, but the TV personality opened up about one slip up that left him “ashamed” while being interviewed at his pub The Farmer’s Dog last week.
When host George Lamb asked Clarkson his biggest farming mistake to date, Cooper, 28, could be heard laughing from the crowd, leading to Clarkson joking: “F*** off Kaleb.”
“It might be this year when we had Cereals, a huge farming exhibition, I guess is the right word, at Diddly Squat,” he said (via The Oxford Mail) of playing host to the largest arable farming event in the UK.
“30,000 farmers came, and I decided to go and drill the barley in the field that they’d all have to drive by,” Clarkson explained. “Every single farmer in the country would drive past it, and I did the drilling, and I didn’t level the drill. On a couple of occasions, I forgot to turn the fan on and apparently didn’t drive in a straight line either.”
Clarkson explained that this moment had occurred while the cast had been filming season six of the TV show – which this week won a National Television Award – with Cooper’s emotional reaction playing out on camera in scenes expected to air in 2027.
“You’ll see this in season six, but Kaleb did a speech when he’s almost in tears saying, ‘I’m not from a farming background, lots of farmers don’t think that I’m a proper farmer. You’ve completely messed this up, they’re all going to think that I can’t farm,’ and it’s one of the most heartfelt, tragic things you’ve ever seen.”
Clarkson cheekily added that he’d “felt so ashamed, so genuinely ashamed” that he’d had to drink his own Hawkstone beer to feel better. “But I think that was probably my worst mistake, genuinely,” he added.
Earlier in the week, Clarkson was in attendance at the NTAs where his series took home the trophy in the brand new reality docuseries category.
Season five of the show saw the divisive presenter reveal that he had been diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer, which he is now in remission for.
Speaking backstage after the win, Clarkson called the experience of winning a “thrill” and said that it represented a “vote for farmers”.
“The people who voted for us… I also think they kind of voted for farmers. I think they are going, ‘Oh that is a difficult job,’” he said.
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