Meet Lisa Hogan, the Dubliner who has captured Jeremy Clarkson’s heart
It seems that it’s true what they say there really is someone out there for everyone, it just took Jeremy Clarkson a few attempts to find ‘the one.’
The former Top Gear was married twice, to Alexandra James and Frances Caine, before he came to meet his statuesque 6ft 2″ other half Lisa Hogan. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he was the one for Lisa and the duo has gone from strength to strength over recent years even giving fans an insight into their lives on the hit TV show Clarkson’s Farm.
Now that Jeremy has revealed his health scare which he finally addressed after going to a wellness retreat with Lisa, just how did the motoring journalist manage to bag the Dublin beauty? Here’s what we know…
When did they meet?
According to a novel written by Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend Phillipa Sage, The Wonderful World Of Jeremy Clarkson: My Life On The Road With Jeremy, it was when he was already supposed to be in a committed relationship.
Clarkson was married to his second wife when they met and in the book, she describes herself as ‘the other woman’. Then, in 2017, she found out he was also seeing Lisa.
‘He’d actually told me: “I was born for you” and asked me to stay the night a few days before he was out with Lisa,’ Philippa said in a recent interview. ‘Then one of my friends pointed out the photograph of him with another woman.
‘I thought: “Oh yes, she’s definitely his type. She’s tall and blonde. He’s gone for the perfect upgrade: taller, skinnier, younger.” So I was like: “F**k off, what are you doing when we are supposed to be working things out?”’
Jeremy told her to ‘calm down’, assuring Phillipa that Lisa was ‘just a friend’, but a few weeks later admitted he wanted to be with Lisa.
Though we don’t know when they did finally get together the two made their official debut as a couple at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards in 2017. Now, it is Lisa Hogan who has become chatelaine of Clarkson’s Diddley Squat Farm, and who regularly features on the Prime Video series that follows their fortunes.
‘I think she’s really enjoying doing that, because she’s even less of a country girl than I am — though she’ll probably say different. She was born in Dublin and has lived in Switzerland, Majorca and London, and yet there she is with her filthy Doc Martens on, stomping around, running that farm shop and loving it,’ said Clarkson.
Who is Lisa Hogan?
Lisa had a middle-class upbringing in Dublin. Her father Maurice was an architect who died when she was 14. Her mother, former model Arlene Underwood, remarried to Raymond Keaveney, director of the National Gallery and whose brothers Peter and Mark founded the nationwide hairdressing chain that bears their names.
She was educated at Alexandra College in Milltown, and later became a model, artist and actress. But her list of achievements doesn’t start there, John Cleese saw her as a muse and cast her in 1997’s Fierce Creatures.
Lisa had dated jockey and stockbroker Roger Weatherby, and was linked to Tony O’Reilly’s son Gavin for a while, before she met and married Steven Bentinck, with whom she had three children, Wolfe, Alice and Lizzy.
Theirs was an enviable lifestyle, split between London, New York, a mansion in Switzerland, a castle on the Isle of Wight, an Elizabethan home in Essex, and the yacht, the Zaca A Te Mona, which was permanently on standby in Majorca.
Yet like her other half, finding true love was a struggle and she herself went through a divorce from Steven in 2005, when Lisa allegedly employed Prince Charles’s divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, to act for her. The divorce was finalised in 2011.
Addressing their own split rumours
With all the drama that came following Jeremy’s words about Meghan Markle, rumours of a split plagued the pair. But Jeremy came out to shush the swirling gossip, stating recently that the two were very much still together and going strong.
‘So many kind messages about today’s reports. But relax. Lisa and I have not split up and I have not been sacked as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,’ he wrote.
Jeremy’s health scare
The presenter revealed in January 2024 that he’d had a 5cm cyst removed and had lost a stone in weight.
He told The Sun: ‘Lisa took me to a health farm and, well, it was so miserable there that I thought, “I’ve got to have this cyst taken out at some point, I may as well go now”. So I checked out of the whole place and checked into hospital, because it was more fun having an operation than eating juniper berries all day long.’
What does the future hold for the couple?
Despite how close they have become, marriage appears not to be on the cards, as she explained to Fabulous magazine. ‘Mrs Clarkson? No, thank you, I like Lisa Hogan,’ she said.
‘We’re at a stage where we are not going to have kids. I think because of our age, it’s much easier. You go: “God, is it you I end up with? OK, that’s it.” But it’s relaxing knowing you are not going to be with anybody else. It gives you a certain amount of liberation.’
She also explained how their relationship developed. ‘He courted me for quite a long time,’ she said. ‘He took me out for dinner. He would pick me up, drop me off. I wanted to know that he wasn’t messing around.’
‘We’d both come out of quite long-term relationships and I was really happy being single. So I was like: “If I’m not going to be single any more, I don’t want to be with a messer”.
‘I had given myself three months, but it was way before that, where I thought: “OK, I really like this person”. He has a laser brain and will take you down — and that’s where the fun and the challenge is with him, trying to take him down.’
As Lisa says, they have been together for five years, but ‘it feels like 50 because we are together 24/7.’
