Clarkson's Farm - review: I watched Jeremy Clarkson on Amazon Prime and got a glimpse of what he’s really like

Right?

Well, if you’re minded to take anything seriously that the self-appointed righteous have to say - particularly on social platforms like X - then you could be forgiven for believing as much. Certainly, his contemplating lobbing a loo-load of number twos at Meghan Markle in a tabloid column did nothing to alter that characterisation of him.

So why, then, is Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon Prime series, so popular? Well, and those hand-wringers aren’t going to like this, either, it is popular because of Jeremy Clarkson. And, of course, Kaleb. And Lisa. And ‘cheerful’ Charlie - honestly, his poshly spoken rollockings of Clarkson are hilarious! And Gerald. A more dysfunctional group you’d struggle to imagine, and, yet, they, well, function so beautifully together.

In the early episodes of the series, now in its third instalment, Clarkson was nothing short of useless. He bought the wrong tractor as a starter for ten - one that wasn’t compatible with any of the equipment on the Cotswolds farm - Diddly Squat - he bought. Like a bull in a china shop, he broke things, flooded things, he failed to plan - how could he, he didn’t know how or what to plan - and generally just flailed around in the deep, dungy end of farming life.

Yet, in this third series, four more episodes of which drop on Friday, much of that has changed. Yes, he still can’t resist - or at least can’t help - slipping into The Grand Tour mode, where he, James May and Richard Hammond created characters for themselves to act out. Personas. As far as I can tell, in The Grand Tour, Clarkson decided on being Homer Simpson. A beer-swilling, utterly inappropriate buffoon whose nincompoopery knows no bounds, and that comes out to play still on occasion. Take, for example, buying a hovercraft to try to spray the crops such that precious farmable land ruined by tractor tramlines can be brought back into production.

And. He’s sweary. Very bloody sweary. But, as each of the already dropped four episodes progresses, you forgive him the potty-mouthed tirades. You forgive him because for all of his oafish bluster and bravado, farming takes its toll on an individual, and here was Yorkshire-born multi-millionaire rent-a-gob Clarkson creaking under the pressure of what farmers up and down the land face on a daily basis. A few naughty words here and there you can perfectly understand.

He and his little venture - not unlike all farms and farmers, by the way - come under attack from all angles: under attack from the weather, under attack by men with clipboards, even physically under attack - at one stage Clarkson is physically assaulted … by a tree! - and then the bombshell: under attack by cancer.

The farm’s now-famed and adored gobbledegook gibberer–in-chief, whose happy-go-lucky demeanour, dovetailed with an indefatigable work ethic and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the farm he’s worked for half a century, have won him a legion of fans - myself included - is diagnosed with prostate cancer.

It floors Jeremy, whose affection for Gerald is palpable, and if you allow yourself to become as invested in the show as Mrs M and I unexpectedly have, it will floor you, too.

Honestly, I cannot recommend the show enough. Not just because, as has been said many times, it shines a light on the incredible work farmers do, but because the dry stone wall that Clarkson has worked so hard to maintain around his macho persona is dismantled rock by rock, stone by stone, until we get a glimpse of who he really is.

Fraught with grief as he and Lisa lose piglet after piglet, his voice cracks, the tears flow and his suit of hard-humoured armour falls to the floor. Bereft at the loss of so many animals, we see him crawling around on hands and knees in sub-zero temperatures, tending to his livestock, shivering piglets tucked inside his coat, whilst frantically seeking out veterinary help.

We see him comfort others, not least his better half Lisa, as the pressure takes its toll - the absolute opposite of the golden Top Gear and The Grand Tour rule, which, when any one of the three petrol-headed stooges broke down meant the others simply guffawed with glee and drove off, leaving one poor sod by the side of the road (don’t write in, I know who and what else is there with them!)

And, so. Jeremy Clarkson: he is an obnoxious, unnecessarily gregarious, offensive excuse of a man who gives no figs for anyone or anything but himself, right?

Wrong.

Watch Clarkson’s Farm and you’ll see for yourself.

Clarkson’s Farm is available to view on Amazon Prime.