Why is Jeremy Clarkson still on TV?
By Ben Pobjie
As season three of Clarkson’s Farm opens, Jeremy Clarkson is under the pump.
Drought has rendered his land hard and dry. His potatoes have shrivelled and there’s no point in even trying to plant oilseed. The council has shut down the restaurant he opened on the farm in season two, and he’s been forced to sell most of his herd of cattle, including his beloved favourite, Pepper. The future for the farm looks grim.
It’s an understatement to say that Jeremy Clarkson divides the public and critics.Credit: Amazon Studios
Yet one feels that things will all work out OK somehow. Partly this is because it’s TV, and even on a reality series it’s hard to believe in unhappy endings.
But it’s also because this is Jeremy Clarkson, and if anyone in the telly industry has a demonstrated ability to survive disaster and thrive despite seemingly terminal challenges, it’s this guy.
To start with, his TV career is quite an unlikely one: he began as a Paddington Bear toy salesman, moved into journalism and somehow landed a gig on Top Gear less through any motoring expertise than through a bull-headed inclination to say whatever the hell he liked and not care who he pissed off. He then parlayed his status as a car-show presenter into a role bestriding the British media landscape like a provocative right-wing colossus, hurling problematic opinions left, right and centre.
It’s a weird trajectory, but not as weird as his continued presence, and ongoing success, on screen.
Clarkson’s bond with local farmer Kaleb on Clarkson’s Farm is one of the show’s more unexpected developments.Credit: Amazon Studios
Plenty of people have tried to get rid of him over the years, and Clarkson has been happy to provide his enemies with ample ammunition. During his stint on Top Gear, demands for his sacking were a regular occurrence, for reasons ranging from homophobic and racial slurs, to jokes about murderous truck drivers, Nazi salutes, making light of drunk driving and insulting the prime minister.
He actually did get sacked after punching a producer because he couldn’t get a steak at the end of a long day. The experience didn’t chasten him, as he continued to outrage with his opinions, stoking a peak of public opprobrium with a column in The Sun in which he made particularly vicious comments about Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.
Denounced, and not for the first time, as a misogynist dinosaur, Clarkson was actually forced to issue a public apology, and finally time seemed to be up for the man who had long appeared out of joint with the zeitgeist.
And yet, here he is. His dismissal from Top Gear led him and co-stars Richard Hammond and James May to reconquer the motoring world with The Grand Tour (Amazon Prime). Clarkson’s Farm flies high and has been renewed for a fourth season. He’s host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and the career of this 60-something provocateur seems unkillable. Why, exactly, is this man still on television?
Unlike many conservative luminaries ... Clarkson has retained his sense of humour rather than shrinking into bitterness.
Well, firstly, he’s funny. Genuinely funny, not just “I’m laughing because I agree with him” funny. He got onto TV in the first place because of his enormous ability to make people laugh, often despite people’s feelings towards him.
The fact of his comedic chops is underlined by his appearances on shows like QI, mingling with the sort of progressive showbiz luvvies who have generally made a habit of mocking him – and whom he tends to mock himself. Those on the comedy scene are not Clarkson’s people, but they know a funny guy when they see one. Moreover, unlike many conservative luminaries who have felt the slings and arrows of public denunciation, Clarkson has retained his sense of humour rather than shrinking into bitterness.
That’s why he’s on Clarkson’s Farm, fretting over jam jars and cracking one-liners, rather than appearing on right-wing news channel GB News, the usual destination for right-wingers whose cancellation leads them to take refuge in a career angrily shouting at minorities.
Besides being funny, Clarkson also has a quality rare in people as famous and controversial as he is: self-awareness. Or at least, the savvy to know that displaying signs of self-awareness is a good career move. A huge part of the appeal of Clarkson’s Farm is his willingness to make himself look ridiculous or even outright stupid.
He knows he’s an ageing celebrity with no clue how to run a farm, and though his bulletproof self-confidence leads him to tackle the task with gusto and a certain lack of common sense, he is also fully aware that people will be tuning in to see him come a cropper as his enthusiastic schemes collide with his ignorance and incompetence. He’s quite happy to give them what they want.
It’s a valuable quality in any entertainer, and one that Clarkson has in greater quantity than most: the insight to understand your own weaknesses and inherent absurdities, and to retain a healthy sense of them even while you’re spouting off about everything that bugs you in the modern world.
Another rare quality he has, which is shown in Clarkson’s Farm especially, is humanity. He may have built an image as a lumbering dinosaur, stomping irritably through the world without a care for who he upsets, but his capacity for connecting with people, for affection and compassion, is a bit of a revelation.
In the show, Clarkson bonds with the unlikeliest of people, most particularly his young offsider, Kaleb, and their fierce and often hilarious arguments are a highlight, along with the burgeoning and loving relationship between the pair.
Clarkson in 2008 when he was suspended from Top Gear after an altercation with a producer.Credit: AP
He also shows a soft side that would surprise many, crying at the loss of a loved animal or bad news about a friend.
The fact that, after a four-decade career staking out his place in entertainment as the anti-government, right-wing, petrolhead blowhard, he’s managed to morph into a nature-loving country squire – even expressing concern about climate change! – might speak to perhaps Clarkson’s greatest asset: adaptability.
Public opinion about Jeremy Clarkson may be set in stone for some, but the man himself has shown a remarkable enthusiasm for leveraging his well-known persona, only to pull the rug out and surprise everyone. And as the legions who can’t get enough of the man ploughing fields and chasing sheep show, you just gotta love a guy like that.
Clarkson’s Farm (season 2) is on Nine, Tuesday, 8.50pm and 9Now. Season 3 streams on Amazon Prime.
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