It helps him to get a view from both sides of the discussions of the day.

As a lad who grew up on a farm in East Yorkshire, he also knows the harsh realities of life in a rural community.

At the turn of the century he became frustrated that, amid the articles about farming and the rural community in his chosen daily newspapers, he failed to see anything that actually related to reality as he saw it.

"Farming and rural life were big issues of the day, but nothing I was reading actually reflected the life I knew," says Benson.

"The story was either of little organic farms and farmers who were selling their produce at ethical farmers' markets, or of rural villages with buxom barmaids and foaming tankards of beer. The real stories about the people who lived in farming communities were never represented."

So Benson set about doing it himself. His memoir, The Farm, which captures the very essence of life on a farm, was a bestseller even before it appeared on the Richard and Judy Book Club shortlist for 2006.

The book did several things. As well as capturing a way of life that was slipping into extinction, it railed against the injustice being done to the common farmer through the Nineties. It was shortlisted for The Guardian's First Book of the Year award, it laid bare some members of the author's family who preferred anonymity. It also introduced audiences to Benson, who comes off as something of a buffoon when it comes to all things practical – in other words, the sort of thing necessary when it comes to running a farm.

"I've got no sense of balance. Not that I always fall over, I mean in the sense of balancing things on top of each other," says Benson.

"So when I was trying to stack bales of hay, I just couldn't get them to go straight, no matter how hard I tried."

Nor could he, as he relates in one amusing episode in his bestselling memoir, get a tractor to go in a straight line. Instead, at the wheel of the tractor, he tore down a hedge.
"I don't want to be all 'aw gee shucks' about it, but I was genuinely surprised at the response and the success of the book," says Benson, who retains his Yorkshire accent despite living in London all his working life.

"I couldn't see who would be interested in the story, but people enjoyed the detail of family life in the book."

Born in a South Yorkshire village in 1966, Benson was a toddler when the family moved to a farm on the East Yorkshire Wolds. Along with brother Guy and sister Pauline, he was brought up on the farm, but tractor oil was never in Benson's blood.

"There was lots of banter among my father's friends about me and my peers. They were generally rural types who were good at that sort of thing, and probably regarded me as a fool." Benson checks himself and, in a display of the disarming honesty which is a feature of his writing, adds: "Let's be honest, they did regard me as a fool."

Despite his cackhanded-ness when it came to all things agricultural, it was still expected that Benson would follow his father and become a horny-handed son of the soil.

He had other ideas, left Yorkshire for the capital and went to King's College to study English Literature. Although he did return to Yorkshire to work briefly on the Beverley Guardian, he soon moved back to London where he worked for various publications as a freelancer before landing a job at style magazine The Face in 1993. He became editor two years later.

While his personal fortunes rose, those of his family and their farm, declined. The story became The Farm, a tale reflected in rural communities across the land.Eventually the family's overdraft matched the assets. It was crunch time and they decided to sell up.

Benson, to help with the sale, returned to Yorkshire and to memories of his childhood. The polar opposites of Benson's life as a child and his life as an adult created a clash between worlds. It was the perfect source material for a book.

After having the proposal accepted by a publisher, he borrowed his sister's house in Hull for two weeks and typed out the story which became the bestseller.

His private family felt strange about being put on such a public stage. He tells a story of attending a Yorkshire Post Literary Lunch after the book was published.

"I thought it was going to be a few people. When I realised what a big event it was, I was terrified," he says.

"I asked our lad (his brother) to come along and I ended up being really worried about him. This lad brought up on a farm lunching with the ladies of Harrogate. At the end, I went off to sign some books and chat to people and when I found Guy he was surrounded by women loving the chance to meet him and asking him all sorts of questions. When we were driving back I asked him what he thought and he
said: 'What does taciturn mean?'"

The cultures of the farm and Benson's literary world are about to clash again, with the opening tonight of a new play based on the book.

The play is staged this weekend at the Lakeside
Arts Centre in Nottingham and will tour the East Midlands in June, with the hope that it may tour more widely.

The idea for the production was a surprise to Benson, who was contacted by artistic director of theatre company New Perspectives, Daniel Buckroyd, who wanted permission to adapt and direct the story .

"I thought that it might be interesting, so I agreed to meet him," says Benson.

"It was important to me that we had something in common and he would tell the story truthfully."

Benson acknowledges the charge of exploitation, inescapable when it comes to discussing the writing of memoirs. So how did his family feel when Benson announced that now their lives would be on the stage?

"I was worried about telling my family, and I mentioned it to my brother. He said that they should get Michael Crawford as Frank Spencer to play me," says Benson.

The thing that stands out to Benson is that the story on stage, like the story he wrote, is very much his brother's.

"He's the hero of the piece. I had another Yorkshire Post Literary Lunch 'moment' when we were in rehearsals and they were running through a scene when
Guy's favourite boar was taken away.

"I wrote about how quiet he was at the time and attributed a lot to his thoughts when that happened. The actor playing him asked what he was thinking at the time. He looked at him and said 'nowt really'. There I was putting all this emotion into the scene, which really didn't exist!"

The Farm is at Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, this weekend, then tours the Midlands.
For information log on to www.newperspectives.co.uk