Sadly, nobody on Diddly Squat greets you with a ‘hi-diddly-ho neighborino’, but we’ll just have to let that slide.
I recently spent some time on the set of Clarkson’s Farm and was previewed to a little behind-the-scenes look at the Prime Video series, ahead of season three.
As the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Kaleb Cooper were wittering around the farm, I got to find out if Diddly Squat is really what it’s made out to be.
Is it as real as it seems?
Yes. It is.
The farm really is 1000 acres and farming does actually happen. Shocking, I know.
We were taken around the farm in a tractor and it seems to be in good nick, considering the size of the land.
This idea that the farm is just a giant TV set is not the case at all. It takes a lot of manpower to keep it running.
Clarkson’s Farm is not staged like The Grand Tour
Jeremy wanted to make it clear that the show is ‘actually real’ and ‘what you see actually happens’.
“And none of it’s planned. I mean The Grand Tour, everything was planned, literally everything, you know, ‘Richard move your eyebrow that much’,” he said.
“Nothing is planned on this, nothing, I have no script.
“And every single day when we meet to do filming, every day, we’ll have a vague idea of what we need to do, like I need to re-drill this field, we’re doing season four now, so I need to redraw that field because I did it wrong the first time and I need to do this, I need to do that.
“So we’ll meet actually tomorrow to do that.”
“And I can guarantee we’ll end up doing something completely different, because the weather will have changed or some fence will have fallen down or whatever it might be and you never ever know what you’re going to do in farming, never.” he continued to say.
“I don’t have time to pretend to be someone else. You see, The Grand Tour, Richard Hammond isn’t as stupid as he’s made out.
“I’m not as bombastic as it’s made out, and James May isn’t quite as boring as is made out. And so you’re playing a caricature, you’re playing a role, you know, you’re there to provoke, you know, be stupid.”
Jeremy and Kaleb’s on-screen bromance is the same off-screen
The pair’s chemistry is something that you cannot fake, and up close, they are exactly the same as they are on-screen.
Their friendship centres around bickering, bantering, honesty, and most importantly, respect.
While Kaleb has taught his co-star how to farm, Jeremy has taught the farmer how to be a celebrity.
The young dad-of-two now has millions of followers and his own businesses Kaleb Cooper Contracting Limited (which deals with traditional farming matters) and Kaleb Cooper Productions Limited (which looks after his television related activities).
However, he insists he still isn’t a celebrity.
“Still very much a farmer, I spend every day on farm. A lot of people go on tour every now and then. But it’s only been happening for a very long time because I missed the farm too much,” he said.
“If you’re going to spend 18 hours in a tractor on my own and just don’t talk to anybody. It’s amazing. It’s the best thing in the world, really.”
Clarkson really does love his piglets
Again, what you see on TV is what you get in real life.
We were taken to the pig huts, and Jeremy was in and out of the huts like a father checking on his kids.
From hopping in and out of Ferraris to pigsties is quite the transition.
Rather, the car enthusiast/turned farmer was gushing over the surviving piglets who’d escaped a tragic death on season three.
“Aren’t you a good piglet?” he said as he held it like a newborn.
Clarkson’s pig breeding strategy ended in heartbreak when two of the farm’s pigs gave birth to over a dozen little piglets – most of them had died.
Despite attempts to save one of the surviving piglets by taking it into the family home, it also died shortly after.
Clarkson said that it’s the first time he’d ever seen his girlfriend Lisa Hogan cry.
What it was like being driven around in a tractor by Jeremy Clarkson
Growing up, if you told me that one day, Jeremy Clarkson would be driving me around in a tractor I would have asked what you were smoking.
But this did actually happen and I can confirm, it was surreal.
Jeremy was taking us around Diddly Squat in his Lamborghini tractor, while we were sat in an attached trailer with Kaleb, who was being our personal ‘tour guide’.
He also asked for a tip at the end of the journey – we thought he was joking.
As expected, Clarkson’s driving was mostly on-point, apart from one or two near-misses on narrow roads.
The farm shop is surprisingly small
Lisa Hogan was on hand to show off some of the fresh produce the farm has to offer.
You’ve got sausages, eggs, milk, bread, booze, chutney, oils, candles, books – a bit of everything really.
It’s not as expensive as everyone seems to make out either, but it obviously depends on what you buy.
A pack of six sausages will set you back £3.80, while a 1lb homemade pork pie costs £6.90.
One bottle of beer is £3.90 and it’s £32 for a crate.
There’s also a ‘This Smells Like My Bollocks’ scented candle for sale in the shop, which weirdly smells like leather seats.
Amid such a variety of products, the shop really isn’t that big, and you can probably only fit around eight to 10 people in at once.
What the most expensive item is in the farm shop, according to Lisa
Lisa claims that the most expensive item in the shop is the 50cl Gin that comes in an Orange Peel, Nutmeg flavour, a Juniper, Beetroot, Apple and Dil concoction and a Maris Otter Malt, Coriander seeds & Fuggles Hops combo.
One carton will set you back £39 and it is the highest priced product in the Diddly Squat farm shop.
The food on the farm is great
We ate from the food truck and with the organic meat on offer, it was hard to resist the hamburger, which I got with a portion of truffle fries.
As you can tell from the picture, it tasted incredible.
What happened when I met Jeremy
I told Jeremy that he is my dad’s hero and that my earliest TV memory was rewatching a VHS of the red Lamborghini Diablo episode on Top Gear.
He said that a lot of his fans tend to be fathers.
Final thoughts
Having looked at proceedings up-close it’s impossible to not recognise how much the farm and the show mean to Jeremy and he’s not letting go of either any time soon.
Clarkson’s Farm is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.
