He's baaaack.!
With probably the biggest tractor....in the world.
Well, it sure ain't gonna please the Guardian's TV reviewer, Lucy Mangan, who clearly despises Clarkson with every fibre of her being, as illustrated by her less than complimentary - for that, read scathing - review of Jeremy's new series, but the good news for the rest of us is that Amazon have picked up Clarkson's Farm for a second season. Boy, she must be spitting bullets, knowing that. Or in her case, pullets - well, this is a programme about farming, and chickens and stuff.
I'll repeat that, Lucy; this is a programme about farming (from her review, I'm not sure she fully understood that). In fact, I'm wondering how much of it she actually bothered to watch. If she had put the effort in, she wouldn't have written '..it’s his total contempt for farming that makes this such a grim harvest'.
Because if there's one thing that shines through the show it's the admiration that he does have for farmers, particularly here in the UK. This was evident every time he rode his beast of a tractor, ploughed his acreage, planted his barley, reaped his field of rape, built his dam, renovated his irrigation system, established his farm shop, wrestled with God knows how much DEFRA bureaucracy, battled with drought and floods, stuck his arm up countless ewes' backsides, got weepy when he sent his animals to the slaughterer, and all this while the country has been gripped by a major pandemic. The end result, in the worst year for farmers since 1976, earning him the princely income, after expenses, of £144.
Which, in the final episode, even prompted him to say to camera and his long suffering farm management advisor, Charlie Ireland, "Honestly, what are farmers going to do...the ones that don't have an Amazon film crew following them around and Who Wants to be a Millionaire to top up the income?"
Contempt for farming? Give me a break. Especially as the vast majority of farmers who've watched the show seem to think that it's great, and a brilliant advert for the hard work and extraordinary hours that they put in to an industry that doesn't always get the praise it deserves.
Ah, yes, but anyway, apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play..?
You bet your sweet bippy I did. It was glorious; hysterically funny in parts, as you would expect, while being a hundred times more informative than the slew of supposed farming shows on the telly, with the possible exception of the excellent BBC series This Farming Life.
The lad was helped, of course, by an array of characters who wouldn't have been out of place in stand-up, From boy wonder, Kaleb, Ellen the shepherdess and the above mentioned 'Cheerful' Charlie to Jezza's long-suffering, but roll-up-the-sleeves-and- pitch-in-with-the-dirty-jobs girlfriend, Lisa, and the wonderful Gerald, who, if I didn't know any better, is clearly the bastard offspring of Professor Stanley Unwin and the front man from the Wurzels.
Roll on Season 2 ...!
And never mind, Lucy. Or even: never mind Lucy