“Are you happy?” I ask Jeremy Clarkson. A few times on Clarkson’s Farm, you said were happy. His thick eyebrows seem low, like storm clouds gathering. “I said that in season one, episode one,” he replies. “And I meant it then. Lockdown was a blessed relief. You thought: no one’s inviting me out, I don’t have to go anywhere. Lisa would say, ‘Let’s go on holiday again next weekend.’ And I could say, ‘No! We can’t!’ It was brilliant. We were stuck here. So I was very happy at work then.” Didn’t he say he was happy at another point, while building his pigpen or sowing on his tractor? He looks at me, eyebrows locking, lips pursed in thought. He has perfect recall of the entire Clarkson’s Farm archive. He was pleased when he did those things, but it wasn’t a blanket expression of happiness. Pleased? “Well, what did I do for 25 years? I drove around corners shouting and achieved nothing. Nothing! And then you plant a field of mustard, which I did last year, and some of it grew. Not as much as I’d been hoping, but some. So you have a sense of achievement.”
Could we allow for the possibility that he might be contented, then? Clarkson concedes that springtime is nice. “This is going to sound awfully pretentious, but I’ve never noticed the buds coming on the trees before. I spent a good 20 minutes yesterday staring at buds, going, is that too early? Or is that later than normal?”
