‘I’m always getting shouted at’: Backstage With… Jeremy Clarkson who swaps cars for cows
He’s known for hosting The Grand Tour and previously Top Gear, but in his latest show Jeremy Clarkson is swapping cars for cows as he takes up farming.
Clarkson‘s Farm sees the presenter getting to work on land he owns following the retirement of the farmer who had been looking after it, and follows his antics for a year.
In order to learn the ropes, the 61-year-old calls in local farmer Kaleb Cooper, who almost immediately has to tell Clarkson off and put him in his place.
Kaleb Cooper was tasked with training ‘poor pupil’ Clarkson. Pic: Amazon Prime Video
It’s a sight many viewers won’t be familiar with, but Clarkson claims it’s something he’s used to.
“I get shouted at all the time,” he told Sky News’ Backstage podcast. “I’m constantly being shouted out by newspapers and bosses, I’m always being shouted at. You don’t see it on television – I’m shouting at James May and Richard Hammond, that’s usual.
“But in real life, you get shouted out by people who know what they’re doing. I didn’t know what I was doing… I thought I know best, and then, of course you realise you don’t know best, you must listen.”
There’s no doubt it’s been a steep learning curve for the star, who says he bought the farm that he lives on in 2008 on impulse and then decided to work on it himself on impulse, too.
He says the idea to turn his endeavours into a TV show grew as he started farming and realised how much he had to get his head around.
“I was starting to think I didn’t know anything about farming, and then I thought if I don’t know anything about farming, chances are a lot of people don’t know anything about farming,” he said.
“Whatever [farming insights] we get are from the news, which is: look at this American with an overheated shed full of animals that are dying of thirst and hunger and misery, or you’ve got Kate Humble with a newly born lamb in a nice little barn, bottle feeding it.”
Clarkson admits he had no idea what he was doing at first
The presenter says his farm is typical of many in the UK, so the series really raises awareness of the challenges faced by farmers.
“I thought we’d do a straight farming programme… this is a medium-sized farm – it’s not particularly big and it’s not particularly small – growing what almost everybody grows around here anyway,” he said. “And this is farming – and it’s not the caricature of Jeremy Clarkson, it’s actually Jeremy Clarkson.
“It’s not the one that falls over and catches fire, it’s the one who gets shouted out all day long.”
Clarkson unwittingly chose a tough year to start his new career, not because of the coronavirus pandemic, but because the weather made life for farmers extremely challenging.
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He says there were five weather records broken in the year from 2019 to 2020, with a wet autumn and a hot dry spring.
But despite the rough start, Clarkson has no regrets. “Because I’ve got nothing to judge it against – I’d never been in a good year and here I am in the next year and we’re having the wettest spring just about ever… it’s all mad, so I can’t judge.”
Cooper, the young farmer tasked with teaching Clarkson the basics, told Sky News’ Backstage Podcast the star does not make a good pupil.
“He was terrible, he didn’t listen at all,” he said. “I’d tell him one thing and be like, ‘you haven’t got that, have you?’ He’d go, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah’.
“He didn’t listen, he just switched off and goes, ‘you know what, I know how to do it anyway’.”
Clarkson’s Farm is out on Amazon Prime Video – hear our review in the latest episode of Backstage, the film and TV podcast from Sky News
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Om Fahad: Iraqi social media influencer shot dead by gunman on motorbike who posed as food delivery rider – report
A well-known Iraqi social media influencer has reportedly been shot dead in her car by a gunman on a motorbike.
Om Fahad, whose real name is Ghufran Sawadi, was killed outside her home in Baghdad’s Zayouna district on Friday, according to the AFP news agency, citing security officials.
It appears the unidentified attacker pretended to be delivering food to the victim, one security source said.
Om Fahad, who has nearly half a million TikTok followers, became famous for posting light-hearted videos where she dances to Iraqi music.
Six days ago, she shared footage of herself driving in a car and also posing in front of a mirror. They have each been watched hundreds of thousands of times.
The influencer was sentenced to six months in prison in February last year for sharing videos that a court ruled contained “indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”.
A campaign was launched in 2023 by the Iraqi government to clamp down on social media content which broke the country’s “morals and traditions”.
The interior ministry set up a committee to look for “offensive” clips on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, with several influencers being arrested.
“This type of content is no less dangerous than organised crime,” the ministry declared in a promotional video which asked the public to help by reporting such content.
“It is one of the causes of the destruction of the Iraqi family and society.”
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Speaking last year, interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan argued the morality campaign has “nothing to do with freedom of expression”.
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In 2018, gunmen in Baghdad shot dead Tara Fares, who was a model and influencer.
After years of war and sectarian conflict following the 2003 US invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq has returned to some semblance of normality despite sporadic violence, political instability and corruption.
But civil liberties, particularly among women and sexual minorities, are still constrained in a conservative and male-dominated society.
R Kelly’s challenge against a 20-year sentence for child sex convictions has been quashed by an appeals court.
The singer was correctly sentenced to 20 years in prison, a Chicago court ruled on Friday.
He was convicted in 2022 on three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex.
In his appeal, Kelly, 57, argued Illinois’ old statute of limitations – which required prosecution of child sex crime charges within 10 years – should have applied, rather than the current law permitting charges while an accuser is still alive.
The appeals court rejected this, labelling it an attempt by Kelly to elude the charges entirely after “employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet”.
He also argued that charges involving one accuser should have been tried separately from the charges tied to three other accusers due to video evidence that became a focal point of the Chicago trial.
Prosecutors have said the video showed Kelly abusing a girl. The accuser, only identified as Jane, testified for the first time that she was 14 when the video was taken.
The three-judge panel from the appeals court noted jurors acquitted Kelly on seven of the 13 counts against him “even after viewing those abhorrent tapes”.
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In a written statement, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said they plan to seek a US Supreme Court review of the decision and “pursue all of his appellate remedies until we free R Kelly”.
“We are disappointed in the ruling, but our fight is far from over,” she said.
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