Celebs on the Farm: How time in the Yorkshire Dales opened Linda Robson’s eyes to agricultural life

So when Linda, who turns 63 next month, was asked by a TV company to take part in a reality TV show to stay on a farm and learn what rural life was really all about, she agreed.

The MTV show, Celebs on the Farm, which begins tonight, is focused on a Dales farm where Linda and a bevy of TV personalities, including singer Duncan James and actor Shaun Williamson, are put to task. Their efforts are judged by Yorkshire farming expert Chris Jeffrey, with one of the contestants being crowned Supreme Champion Farmer.

“None of us had any clue at all about life in the countryside,” admits Linda. “We were all very much ‘townies’, people who – like millions of others – shop in the local supermarket, and who could identify what a cow or a sheep looked like, and that’s about it.”

Despite campaigns to champion farmers and producers there are still many people who have little idea where their food comes from.

“I’m lucky enough to have a couple of urban farms near where we live, where youngsters can go and see chickens and goats and geese and the smaller farm animals, and I always took my own three children (Louis, Bobbie and Lauren) to visit to make them aware of the bigger world,” says Linda.

Linda was born and raised in north London, so she jumped at the chance to spend time on a working farm in the Yorkshire Dales.

“I’ll confess that I had a very sanitised view of what life on a farm was all about.

“When they said ‘Linda, one of your tasks will be milking the herd’, I immediately had an image in my mind that was totally out of a nursery rhyme – of me in a polka-dotted frock, with a matching ‘Little Miss Muffet’ cap, and sitting on one of those sweet little three-legged stools.”

Of course the reality, she says, was very different.

“We were filming in October, it was already getting very chilly and a professional farmer’s milking parlour is never the warmest place to be. And instead of my imagined outfit, it was white overalls, wellies and plastic hats, and being surrounded by a lot of cows ready to give milk, and a lot of fearsome looking machinery to pop on to their udders. So, like everything else in my career, I got on – and did it.”

The contestants weren’t allowed to deliver a calf, but they were shown how it is done by working on life-size models, the sort of things used by young farmers learning their skills.

“I’ve got to say that I enjoyed every minute of the experience, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she says.

“I’m an actress, that’s what I do, but I emerged (I think we all did) with an amazing respect for Dales farmers, and indeed for farmers everywhere.

“What we all learned is that most of us take our food supplies for granted, like eggs, milk and bacon. Few of us question how these things are made, created, delivered, and the awesome amount of hard work that goes into production.”

She was equally impressed by the North Yorkshire countryside. “What can I say but ‘wow’, so stunningly beautiful, a place of such contrasts. Glorious skies one day, a stiff wind and scudding clouds the next. I think that we had just about everything that the weather gods could throw at us during our time there – frequently on the same day!

“We were supposed to have been staying in caravans on the farm, but the current social rules meant that we were split up, and I found myself in a wonderful little B&B where the Yorkshire hospitality and friendliness was second to none.”

She adds: “I found out that a lot of farmers, and their families, frequently feel very isolated because other folk are often miles and miles away.

“Farmers get up before dawn and go to bed after an extremely hard day’s work, to start all over again the next day. That’s 365 a year, no stopping, no pauses, because your responsibility is what is in your fields, sheds, milking parlours and barns.”

She empathises, too, with the mental health challenges that can come with the stresses of farming life.

“I’ve had two big bouts of depression in my own life, and I don’t say that asking for sympathy. I say it because it’s a subject that only gets worse if you internalise it, and when you are not able to articulate your issues. And there are several farmers who, for whatever reason, suffer from the same thing,” she says.

“There’s an alarming suicide rate, I discovered. People have this sort of ‘rosy glow’ about sunshine and cute animals down on the farm, and that is far away from the facts. It’s hard graft, the likes of which many will never ever know.”

Linda says she has respect for what she calls the ‘Yorkshire way’ of doing things.

“I think that I’m known, to put it simply, as someone who doesn’t ‘suffer fools gladly’ and I do speak my mind. I’m not rude, I am professional, and I think that is a trait that a lot of Yorkshire folk will recognise as ‘telling it like it is.’”

Linda is well known for her appearances in Birds of a Feather, alongside Pauline Quirke and Lesley Joseph, and is a familiar face on the hit daytime show Loose Women, where she has been part of the panel of regulars for a decade and more, and where she first made a guest appearance in 2003.

“It’s never less than fun to do,” she laughs, “but you have to be very careful in what you say, because discussions behind the scenes and off-camera are frequently picked up on by the producers and the researchers.

“I remember having a lovely chat one day with some of the other girls about what our real fears were, and I said that one of mine would be to parachute out of a plane. What did I find myself doing a month or so later? You’ve guessed it! Another time we ran a piece on ‘body confidence’, which had us all parading in a swimsuit in front of the dishy Bryan Adams. Now that needed a lot of chutzpah, believe me.”

She views her career with gratitude. “I’ve met people I never thought I ever would – from Yorkshire farmers to Oprah Winfrey – and it’s been a lot of fun, even though there have been ‘down’ times when the work hasn’t been there,” she says.

“I’m always so pleased to be asked by youngsters about how they can get into this business – I tell the truth. That it’s often incredibly hard to survive, and that they have to want to do it, and to suffer the interminable knocks backwards that come along all too often.

“But now I’m going to add that nothing, absolutely nothing, is as hard as trying to milk a reluctant cow in Yorkshire on a bleak early winter’s day...”

Praise for Amanda Owen

Linda Robson admits she is more at home in an urban setting, but equally is full of praise for Britain’s farmers who help keep the nation fed, something that has become particularly important over the past 12 months.

She is equally effusive about Amanda Owen, aka the Yorkshire Shepherdess, who helps run the Ravenseat farm up in the wilds of Swaledale, as well as raise a family.

“There is no way that I could ever be anything like the ‘Yorkshire Shepherdess’. I wouldn’t have the vaguest clue about how to begin,” says Linda.

“She’s amazing, not only working on their farm, but taking care of her family, and then managing to write and blog about her life. Now that is what I call multi-tasking.”

Brand new to MTV, Celebs on the Farm starts tonight and is on every week night for two weeks at 9pm.


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