Jeremy Clarkson, the British television personality famous for driving souped-up cars in remote parts of the world and saying wildly inappropriate things about everybody, has suddenly become one of the most important voices in British food production. His series, Clarkson’s Farm is now the second most watched show in Britain, setting a new record for Amazon Prime with 5.1 million viewers streaming the program in the first week of its third season.
With numbers like that, the network has been forced to overlook Clarkson’s intemperate remarks about Megan Markle and is now committed to two more seasons. Viewers just can’t get enough of Clarkson and his farm workers as they throw all their energies into pigs, sheep, cattle, a myriad of cash crops, bees, mushrooms and try to sell all of it from a farm store and restaurant.
Five years ago, just as the pandemic was approaching, Clarkson struggled to reinvent himself after punching out a producer on the set of Top Gear and getting the series cancelled. Then the farmer who had been managing the thousand acre parcel in West Oxford County that Clarkson had purchased with his television earnings suddenly announced his retirement. Frustrated by the absence of any suitable candidates to replace the man, Clarkson said, “Why can’t I just do it myself? Farming can’t be that difficult.”
Unable to do anything without an audience, Clarkson brought a television crew with him to document the experience. One of the farm employees, Oxford native Caleb Cooper, stayed on to help Clarkson learn the ropes. The unlikely pair, despite a 30-year age gap and vastly different backgrounds, developed a relationship that is often prickly and profane but always funny. In the process they have done more to explain the challenges of farming to the British public than decades of earnest BBC documentaries.
Rising at dawn every day on Diddly Squat Farm, Jeremy and Caleb battle weather, pests, an army of bureaucrats who police the regulations that cover every facet of food production from food labelling and tractor safety to the humane movement of livestock. Every time Jeremy wakes up with yet another brainstorm for making money, by the end of the day he must face the staggering list of obstacles that prevent him from putting his idea into action.
When the mutton-headed planning department of West Oxfordshire District County shuts down Jeremy’s farm restaurant and imposes a laundry list of prohibitions on what he can sell in the store, Jeremy launches an appeal which he eventually wins. After the planners face national humiliation, they throw in the towel and give up on every single objection. Subsequently, Britain’s federal minister for municipal government declares that British farmers no longer require planning approvals for any buildings they choose to erect on their farms. This is the first major step any British government has taken to undo the maze of obstructionist regulatory legislation that has paralyzed food producers for more than half a century. All because of a television series that just showed farmers going through a typical day on the land.
Coincidentally, I made my own career as a playwright by tapping into the same theme as Clarkson’s Farm. In 1984, I invented the character of a hapless businessman from the city, Walt Wingfield, who comes out to the country determined to farm for a living, much to the amusement of his neighbours. And like Jeremy Clarkson, my hero may have failed at everything he puts his hand to but he does succeed wonderfully at forming lasting friendships on the concession road. His embrace of the rural community surrounding his farm proves far more important to him than making the farm run at a profit. The Wingfield Farm plays have been running on Canadian stages for 35 years now and for several years made the leap to a television series on CBC, Bravo and PBS in the United States.
At every farm conference I attend, someone inevitably comes to the microphone to insist that we do more to educate the consumer about agriculture. The problem is no-one particularly wants to be educated about anything. But they do love a good story. As farmers, we have a wealth of great stories to tell and we should never forget their power to move an audience to action.