Jeremy Clarkson has opened up about a devastating loss on his farm that made his partner Lisa Hogan “so upset”. The star spoke about the incident, that left members of the crew “shellshocked” behind the scenes, ahead of the release of Clarkson’s Farm season 3.
Former Top Gear host Jeremy, 63, looks after a number of different animals on his farm – but he really had his work set out for him when he decided to take on raising pigs. According to The Times, he was inspired by former Prime Minister Liz Truss’ 2014 Conservative Party conference speech, where she announced she would soon be “in Beijing opening up new pork markets”.
Deciding to take up what seemed like an exciting new opportunity, he had the idea that he would let his pigs free-graze in the woods – but he was quickly warned by local expert Charlie Ireland that pigs need “round-the-clock care”. Indeed, any idyllic notions of raising pigs were quickly shattered when Diddly Squat farm was shaken by a sad loss.
Jeremy was horrified to find that there was actually a high mortality rate among the piglets from his first litters, after some of them were accidentally crushed by their mothers. In the aftermath, his girlfriend Lisa was devastated, while his crew were also shaken.
“I reckoned the pigs would provide something that’s sadly lacking in farming today: a bit of genuine happiness,” he told the publication. “Instead, it was almost unbelievably sad.
“I’ve never seen Lisa so upset,” he added. “The film crew looked shellshocked.
“We had a catastrophically high level of deaths and I was desperately worried we were doing something wrong, but it turned out we weren’t.
“It was just that pigs are bad mothers — the Sandy and Black particularly so. That’s why it’s a rare breed.”
Local farming expert Kaleb Cooper has even praised Jeremy’s pig farming efforts, as he spoke about it with The One Show’s Alex Jones when she sat in for Claudia Winkleman on BBC Radio 2 last year.
“The pigs are really good and, annoyingly, he’s a really good pig farmer,” Kaleb admitted.
“It hurts to say that, but he’s actually a good pig farmer,” pretending to be in pain, he continued: “I need to stop saying it! It’s hurting.
“But yeah he’s picked up to it. I wouldn’t say better than me, but he’s good at looking after pigs.”
Clarkson’s Farm season 3 is coming to Amazon Prime Video on May 3.