Jeremy Clarkson has revealed the secret to his curmudgeonly, grumbling character that helped propel his shows Top Gear and The Grand Tour to worldwide success – it was all an act.
Clarkson, whose hit series Clarkson’s Farm returns to Amazon Prime’s global platform on May 3, told The Guardian newspaper he had deliberately made “a comic creation.”
He said: “Everyone assumes the character they see on motoring shows is me, but it’s exaggerated. To think that I was like I was on Top Gear is the same as thinking that Anthony Hopkins is a cannibal.”
And he said that, as a working farmer whose challenges and triumphs are all captured on camera for his hit show, he feels no pressure to be controversial any more:
“I don’t have to think, ‘Right, I’m going to say something stupidly provocative now.’ That’s relaxing. Also, you don’t wake up every morning to find you’re in the middle of a tabloid maelstrom for something you’ve said or done.”
Clarkson told The Guardian his previous, famously dismissive, attitude to global farming should be seen in this light:
“That was part of the caricature. It was a joke.
“Now you think, ‘My neighbours over there, they’ve had to replant everything because it’s all drowned.’ I can’t believe it’s not dominating the news agenda,”
Clarkson’s Farm, with the third season about to begin, is the most watched show on Amazon Prime in the UK and season four has already been commissioned.