Young Philip takes the driving seat

TEENAGE VETERAN: Filming is under way for a new series of The Dales, which will once again feature a teenage farmer and his mother who touched the hearts of millions of viewers. Andrew Vine reports. Pictures by Bruce Rollinson.

PHILIP Mellin got interested in farming early. So early, in fact, that he hadn’t yet taken his first steps.

When he was an infant, his mum, Carol, would lay him amongst the fleeces as she sheared sheep, and since she didn’t believe babies should have dummies, she substituted a flat plastic sheepdog whistle. By the age of 18 months, he could use it.

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Even before then, though, the art and craft of herding sheep with a dog had caught Philip’s attention. “He used to sit in his little rocker before he could walk, and the only television programme that would hold his gaze was One Man and His Dog,” said Carol.

At three, he had his own flat cap and crook with his name inscribed upon it and was working with a dog. A year later, he delivered his first lamb, and by the age of 10, Philip was beating adults on equal terms at sheepdog trials.

He’s still only 17, but already a farming veteran. He’s something else, too – a reality television star. Philip was the magic ingredient in The Dales, the hit ITV show introduced by Adrian Edmondson that brought some of our most glorious countryside and its people into living rooms across the land.

It helped that, taking after his mum, Philip is friendly and open, with a sunny smile and a disposition to match. But there was something else that made the story of this mother and son compelling viewing – that they remained so cheerful and optimistic in the face of grief and adversity.

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Two years ago, Philip’s father, Albert, died aged 71. He’d kept his troubles to himself, and only when he was diagnosed with cancer did he tell his wife.

“He called an ambulance and he walked out of this house in his flat cap and his wellingtons and he never, ever came back again, and it was eight weeks,” said Carol, 52. “He knew he’d got something, because when he was diagnosed he said, ‘I knew I wouldn’t see another Christmas’.

“It gave me to chance to prepare, it wasn’t a sudden death, but because Albert had been the head of the family and made all the decisions, suddenly from a woman’s point of view to be left to make the decisions yourself, that’s quite difficult.

“There’s an emptiness, because he was such a big character, especially in this valley. A big, big man.”

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A big man who loved his son. There is a picture on the wall of him holding his little boy, and both are beaming with delight. Philip thinks of him often. “It was difficult, but we just had to carry on. It was lambing time, and you couldn’t stop and think, you just had to keep going, you couldn’t change it. You’ve got other things to think about, your business, what you’ve got to be doing today, what you’re doing tomorrow, life goes on.”

Carol said: “I think that was a blessing for us, because we’d so much going on, you had to throw yourself into the work, the farm had to keep running. He died right at the beginning of lambing time, and his funeral was at lambing time, so it was literally straight back from the funeral and into the fields and carry on, and things roll on from there, so in that way it made it easier for us, but it still feels like it was yesterday.”

At 15, Philip found himself the man of the house, hard enough for any boy coming to terms with the loss of the father he adored, but made doubly difficult by the demands of a farm set in scenery that looks magnificent to the ITV audience but asks much of those who work it.

High above Haworth, on the road to Colne, the 900 acres of Moor Lodge Farm is all rough moorland and plunging hillsides. “There isn’t a level field anywhere,” said Philip. It’s tough work, and became even tougher in the aftermath of Albert’s death, when Carol was badly hurt in an accident with a cow and forced to lay up for weeks, placing even more pressure on Philip, who juggled school work and keeping the farm running.

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And then the bottom fell out of milk prices for farmers, prompting Carol and Philip to decide to sell their herd of cows. They shed a few tears as they were sold, just as they had when remembering Albert, and the two moments were the most moving of the entire series of The Dales, which caught the closeness of the bond between mother and son.

“I right enjoyed the cows, but there’s no point doing it if you’re not getting any money, and the job didn’t look like it was going to get any better,” said Philip. “We had it harder than a lot of other people, because they let them in, milk them, and let them out into the field, but we had to take them up and down the road, and up and down the hill to the valley because there wasn’t enough grass up here.”

It’s all sheep now for Philip and Carol, 500 of them, and sheepdogs as well. Philip’s lifelong enthusiasm for dogs sees him buying, training and selling them at a profit. The Dales followed him as he converted the old cattle shed into pens for his dogs, and the television crew has started following him again.

Filming is under way for a new series, and it’s seeing Philip branch out. Over the summer, he’s taking delivery of 6,500 bales of straw that he’s bought at a favourable price and plans to sell on at a profit.

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He’s a full-time farmer now, with school put firmly behind him. “I was glad to get away. I don’t know what exam results I got, I never went to look, got a paper telling me what I passed and failed. I needed to be at home more. I did five, and passed three and failed two. I probably passed maths because I was very good at maths, science and geography.”

His fondness for maths is allied to a sharp business brain. Selling dogs is turning a profit for him. “It’s going very well. I keep buying them, training them up and then selling them. There are one or two sending dogs for me to train, but I don’t really want to do that, I might as well buy a dog myself and get one or two thousand pounds out of selling it.

“Some can be hard to train, and it can take a long while. You can do a job with them in five to six weeks, but if you want them more advanced, you’re talking 10 weeks. I’d rather have bitches, because if they don’t turn out, they are more saleable because you’ve got the option of getting a litter from them.

“You can’t do with a soft dog up here. You need a dog to stand up to sheep.”

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He’s taken television in his stride, but The Dales isn’t the first time he’s been on screen. Blue Peter and the programme he loved as a toddler, One Man and His Dog, came calling years ago, as did The Dales Diary.

Philip and Carol’s story plainly touched viewers. One elderly lady wrote to them enclosing £40, with the wish that he should put it towards buying another dog, and a man from Birmingham turned up unexpectedly on their doorstep, having spent three days tracking down all the people featured in The Dales because he’d decided he’d like to meet them and say how much he had enjoyed the show.

Philip’s passion for farming the land his father worked for 40 years came over loud and clear on screen. Carol sees much of her husband in their son, not only because he has inherited his looks, and is growing up into another big man of the valley. “Philip is quite strong-minded and he has his own views. He’s had to stand in my place on occasions when I’ve been injured, or when Albert died, so it’s quite hard when I’m back in action, so that’s when we might clash.”

It’s more than a full-time job, and doesn’t leave much time for anything else, except going rabbiting on a Sunday night or playing snooker. There isn’t a girlfriend so far, and a tongue-in-cheek view of women: “What do I want a woman for? I dread to think. They’re only after your brass anyway, get a whiff that you’ve got a bit of brass and come sniffing round. You’ll not get me with a woman any time fast.”

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Other matters need to be addressed, though, such as driving. “I passed the tractor test last year, but as far as driving the Land Rover, I’m not right bothered, as the insurance will be into the thousands, and it wouldn’t be worth it because I go everywhere with my mum anyway.”

Life is being kinder to Philip and Carol than it was when the cameras first found them facing the loss of their dairy business, and that’s going to come across, because Moor Lodge Farm is full of optimism.

“This next series, we must be full of happiness, laughter and smiles,” said Carol. “People have been very good towards us.”

But what will come across most clearly is Philip’s passion for working this high moorland he’s known and loved every day of his life. “It’s a pleasure to me, I enjoy doing it. I’m not stuck in an office doing something I don’t want to do. “I’ve never known anything else. If I’d have lived in a town, or down in London, I wouldn’t have known anything about farming. I might be better at something else, but I don’t know about anything else, and I like what I’m doing so I’m going to carry on with it.”