Jeremy Clarkson has said he narrowly escaped losing his leg in an accident on his farm, saying he “didn’t walk properly for a week”.
The 61-year-old TV presenter, whose documentary series Clarkson‘s Farm became a surprise hit earlier in 2021, revealed details of the incident on The Jonathan Ross Show, which will air on Saturday.
Farming has more accidents “than all the other industries put together”, he told Ross.
Explaining his own experience, he said: “I got this thing called a telehandler, it’s like a JCB thing. I thought ‘I’ll just use its front to push the post in’.
“It got halfway into the ground and the fence was leaning on it and it flicked back. How it didn’t take my leg off… I didn’t walk properly for a week. This was a quarter of a tonne of fence post.”
Clarkson’s Farm sees the star, best known for The Grand Tour and formerly Top Gear, tending crops and looking after livestock on land he owns in the Cotswolds.
He bought the farm in 2008 and had an employee running things, but when he retired in 2019 the presenter decided to see if he could make a go of it himself.
Now, he has written a book, Diddly Squat: A Year On The Farm, detailing his time as a farmer.
Speaking about how his series came about, Clarkson said: “It was an accident. I was contractually obliged – I had to make a programme on my own. I thought ‘I’m slightly bored of Terminal 5. I’ll film at home on the farm’. I thought what a lovely programme it would be to try and learn to be a farmer. I genuinely love it out there.”
Subscribe to the Backstage podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker
Telling Ross about the show’s standout star, Kaleb Cooper, The Grand Tour presenter said: “He’s entrepreneurial, that’s how I’d describe him.
“The [farm] shop is a huge success and consequently we’ve had to mow a field near it so people can park there and it’s really a mud bath. Kaleb now goes up and charges people £15 to tow their cars out.”
Speaking to Sky News earlier in the year, Clarkson said he was happy to be shown the ropes – and even “told off” – by Cooper.
“I get shouted at all the time,” he said. “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.”