20 The Times Magazineff to Diddly Squat Farm, the setting
for Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon
documentary series about Jeremy
Clarkson’s attempt to farm his
Cotswolds land, which has proved
a monster hit. However, I have
not come to meet Jeremy, even
though he is mooching around
at various times, but Lisa Hogan,
his girlfriend. She may well be the
unsung heroine of the show (“Oh God, don’t
tell Jeremy that”) but, having put that out
there, I think we all know who the real star
is: Gerald. Or Kaleb. No, Gerald.
I arrive early in the morning, taking a taxi
from the station. I am excited to see the farm
and meet Lisa and Jeremy (but mostly Gerald).
I pass the farm shop, which is still just that
small barn, yet even at this hour it’s already
attracted a phenomenal queue, snaking out
of the car park and onto the road. People
queue for four, five hours, Lisa will say. One
couple came from America for the husband’s
birthday. The shop’s bestseller is the “bee juice”
(honey) produced on the farm. There are
millions of bees. The series showed Jeremy
setting up the hives and getting stung on the
bum. We did not fully see him apply Wasp-Eze
to his “crack”, as that was pixelated, thankfully.
Up to the farm proper, with its barns,
where that “too big” Lamborghini tractor is
parked. When Clarkson decided he needed
a tractor, this is what he came back with. It’s
the size of a brontosaurus. I don’t come even
a quarter way up one of the tyres. He has
thus far, he has said, managed “to drive it into
six gates, a hedge, a telegraph pole, another
tractor and a shipping container. I have not
completed a single job without at least one
crash.” I don’t think Gerald would have made
that mistake. Just saying.
Into one of the barns where Lisa has her
office. She and Jeremy have been together for
five years, “Although it feels like 500 as we’re
together 24/7,” she says. Her office is up top
while the cavernous space below is wall-to-
ceiling stock. There’s produce but also souvenir
mugs, hats and T-shirts, and she’s about to
launch a gardening range. Aren’t you amazed?
“We’re totally amazed,” she says. She is 6ft 2in,
Irish, 49, gorgeous, glorious. And she was all
those things on the show. Jeremy has said her
main job was to “roll her eyes” at his moronic
ideas and she was good at that – episode four,
Wilding, and that trout lake: “What the f*** are
you doing? Holy shit, Jeremy!’’ – but mostly, in
fact, she was cheerful, helpful, upbeat, sunny.
She is also gloriously warm, fun and game.
We have her out in the drizzle in barely there
dresses for the photographs and she is a total
sport. She trips at one point, but she says, “It’s
fine. I didn’t go down in a cowpat.”
She brings out the farm’s latest addition,
two red fox labrador puppies, Arya and Sansa,and I get to play with them. Honestly, I couldn’t
have been happier if Gerald had turned up
but, alas, only Jeremy does. He arrives as Lisa
is posing in a stunning red evening gown on
her tractor. Jeremy tells us, “She once took
me to a shop called Chanel. When I went to
pay, I thought it can’t be more than 15 quid
and they’d inputted the wrong amount. It was
so expensive I walked out.”
“He did. He stormed out,” confirms Lisa.
“But not before he’d paid.”
I like her a lot. She also lets me in on some
of Jeremy’s darkest secrets. He wraps presents
beautifully. “He is a really, really good wrapper.”
He can sew. “He is a very dextrous sewer.” She
had a hole under her arm in one sweater “and
he did that for me”. However, he can’t work
the dishwasher. “He doesn’t even know how
to turn it on. Actually, he does. But he won’t.”
Now, a few words for those who are foolish,
don’t know who Gerald is, have not seen
the programme or have resisted. To be fair,I resisted. For ages. I thought I knew what
you’d get with Clarkson, but so many people
started recommending it I decided to give it
one episode and ended up doing all eight in
a day. The deal is: Clarkson bought all this
Oxfordshire land (1,000 acres) in 2008 and
employed a local man, Howard, to do the
“farmering”. When Howard retired two years
ago Clarkson thought he’d take over himself,
sensed it would make a good show. His bosses
at Amazon commissioned it in the hope
viewers would be able to enjoy the “hilarious
consequences” of his attempts to manage the
woods, meadows, wheat, barley and rye.
But what does begin as an admittedly
very funny jape with silly-sized tractors and
barking drones does become so much more.
You become invested. (Will the weather hold
to plant the barley? Will the rain ever give up?
Will the trout suffer sunburn?) And it starts
to mean something to Jeremy. There are tears
in his eyes when three of his “lady sheeps”O
Lisa lets me in on Jeremy’s secrets. ‘He’s a really
good present wrapper. And dextrous at sewing’
Clarkson and Hogan in Diddly Squat’s shopDAN KENNEDY