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The cult of Kaleb: He can't tell an anecdote or hold a tune. But tales about chickens, 'posh t***s' in towns and the best way to wind up Jeremy are drawing 4,000 strong crowds for the REAL star of Clarkson's Farm and his bizarre stand-up tour of UK
They came from far and wide in their mud-encrusted 4x4s. Not the kind you'd see pulling up outside Peter Jones on Sloane Square... but the kind more used to hauling a stricken ewe off a bleak mountainside.
As the rural hinterlands of Dorset emptied out, so the multi-storey car park at the Bournemouth International Centre filled with hard working cars which - like their occupants - were not usually seen around these parts.
The crowd surged into the 4,000-seater B.I.C. in large loud swathes, giant ruddy-faced men, women and children, laughing and bantering like people who hadn't seen each other in months. Many were dressed identically in smart checked shirts, olive green gilet body warmers, flat caps and working trousers and boots. Or 'sheep chic' as one described it.
As their adored leader - until recently a completely unknown young Oxfordshire tractor driver called Kaleb Cooper - bounded onto stage at 7.45pm on Wednesday to a ticker-tape parade welcome complete with dry ice, searching spotlights and booming music, I noticed something rather odd. He was dressed exactly the same as his farming community disciples.
This did not seem to be a coincidence, more the emergence of a new countryside cult.
The World According to Kaleb: The Clarkson's Farm star on his current sell-out tour of the UK
Kaleb Cooper poses with fans after his show at the Bournemouth International Centre
Jeremy Clarkson pictured with Kaleb for the ex-Top Gear host's show Clarkson's Farm
The crowd surged into the 4,000-seater B.I.C. in large loud swathes, giant ruddy-faced men, women and children, laughing and bantering like people who hadn't seen each other in months
If you are among the many many millions who have seen Clarkson's Farm, Amazon Prime's most-watched show in the UK last year, you'll have heard of Kaleb, now 25.
He is the straight-talking, knowledgeable-in-the-ways-of-the-countryside side-kick of a bumbling out-of-his-depth Jeremy Clarkson in this reality series about the hardships of daily life on a working farm. The show's hotly-anticipated third series, filmed at Diddly Squat Farm near Chipping Norton, airs in May.
While we would expect Clarkson - a man at the top of his game for most of his career - to have the Midas touch, Kaleb's rapid rise to fame is rather more intriguing.
Kaleb's story is very much one of being in the right place at the right time. The right place meaning him being deeply ensconced within the disenchanted farming community of Britain, specifically working on a Cotswolds farm Clarkson happened to buy a few years back.
The right time being when TV heavyweight Clarkson, looking around for inspiration one day and backed by Amazon Prime, opined that making a show about the seldom-talked-about (but very important) struggles of life on a British farm was a good idea. After that, Kaleb just seemed to be the missing piece which made the show work.
The story goes that the director of Clarkson's Farm one day called on Kaleb to help Jeremy out of a tight spot at Diddly Squat. Clarkson responded telling Kaleb: 'You sound like my saving grace. It's almost as if God himself has sent you down.' Cue the sound of angels and a halo hovering over the young lad's head.
I was sent this week to find out whether Kaleb does indeed have some God-sent magic all of his own, away from the endless edits, plot twists and re-written lines of Amazon Prime's finest scribes.
The World According to Kaleb is the name of his current sell-out tour of the UK (it's also the name of his Sunday Times best-seller).
Kaleb Cooper bounded onto stage at 7.45pm on Wednesday to a ticker-tape parade welcome complete with dry ice, searching spotlights and booming music
Kaleb Cooper poses for photos with fans after his The World According to Kaleb show
What I found most striking in the show was that while Kaleb is no king of the anecdote, no master of the one-liner and, as we would discover, no holder of a tune (even when that tune is The Wurzels' I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester), he really does know his audience very well indeed. By the end they were putty in his hands.
He gave amusing lessons on identifying crops and farm vehicles, interspersed with farming in-jokes (there are such things, but to save your blushes, they won't be repeated here). Kaleb also seemed to spend a lot of time reminding the audience that he was just one of them, despite his new-found showbusiness credentials.
We are told frequently that he has hardly ever leaves his farming community in Chipping Norton. We are reminded regularly of Kaleb despising white-trainer wearing towns folks, who most often talk 'utter sh**'.
And he really does seem to have a special place in his heart for Londoners: 'If my children ever wore white trainers and moved to London, and become I don't know - an accountant. I don't know what you do in London - just shout at each other. Then I want them to know I will never go and visit them ever.'
He tells a tale of accruing £1,400 of parking fines on the one day he has ever driven to London. We are told how at a show in Cheltenham he showed a picture of a potato plant to the audience just for one upmarket idiot to identify it as basil (cue more hoots of laughter).
Even the townsfolk from his own Cotswolds manor Chipping Norton are labelled 'posh t***s' by him. Chipping Norton resident Clarkson wasn't in the audience on this occasion although he had been previously at Oxford. I noticed at the Bath Forum show in Wiltshire (which I also attended last month) and which is a little closer to Chipping Norton, this comment also wasn't made.
We are also told how Kaleb sees his son Oscar as a 'foreigner' because he was born in Oxford (21 miles away from Chipping Norton).
Kaleb even gave a bizarre insight into his curious hobbies. He said: 'I love chickens. They remind me of little T-Rexes. We were watching a few chickens in the garden where we have them to supply the house with eggs.'
But his fascination didn't end there. He went on: 'So I bought these little T-Rex you can buy on the internet which go around their wings. It's amazing watching out the windows and seeing them run around the garden with these little T Rex arms. I recommend doing it. It always gives me so much joy.'
Kaleb tells how all farmers have their own special place to hide their tractor keys
Kaleb (right) pictured with Jeremy Clarkson for Clarkson's Farm on Amazon Prime
Kaleb Cooper at the Warwick Arts Centre on February 3 for The World According to Kaleb tour
Kaleb added: 'I watched one the other day trying to kill a frog. It was just like a T-Rex running around. I recommend it. I haven't got shares in it either. It's just a recommendation.'
In another of many in-jokes, Kaleb tells how all farmers have their own special place to hide their tractor keys. Not something most Brits would find funny I suspect. But again, it struck a chord with this audience.
We are given a virtual ride in one of Kaleb's own tractors - where he spends 1,200 hours a year and which he calls his 'happy place'. As far as the audience goes, a lot of the first half of the show seemed to be taken up securing an us-versus-them bond.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kaleb reveals - to more cheers and whistles from his followers - that he has never been on a train, has never owned a passport or indeed ever been abroad.
Simple inoffensive knock-about fun though it all was, the audience seemed to be completely besotted - hooting and cheering away at their farming standard-bearer.
The stage show all appeared quite spit and sawdust to start off. But as things progressed, there was a niggling feeling that it had all been quite cleverly put together just to push Kaleb as a reality TV star in his own right, perhaps even, whisper it, with his show on telly.
We heard how Kaleb's background was family and farming orientated, hard-working and honourable. There was a story about how he was bought chickens by his mum for his 13th birthday and began his own business selling eggs to his neighbours. He even paid the fines his mum was handed from him playing hooky from school with the income from his egg sales. We also heard how successful his current farm contracting business was. Real efforts were made to distance himself from the idea that his fame and fortune had come - like other reality stars perhaps - quickly and easily.
There were impassioned speeches about beleaguered dairy farmers, on mental health in the rural communities, on the importance of agricultural shows and on river dredging. We even saw Kaleb posed up with Rishi Sunak at Downing Street, apparently again fighting the farmers' corner.
All the while he was cheered along by those 4,000 fans, who by now were totally sold on the one-man-show version of Kaleb.
By the time Clarkson got his first mention in the stage show (38 minutes in), it almost felt like he was some kind of imposter in Kaleb Land with the Kaleb describing Clarkson as an 'old fossil' and beaming up on stage a very unflattering camera phone picture of him with a large expanse of double-chin.
He did share a couple of stories about Clarkson however - one quite endearing one, another one which felt full of spite just to even the balance.
Kaleb did share a couple of stories about Clarkson however - one quite endearing one, another one which felt full of spite just to even the balance
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kaleb reveals - to more cheers and whistles from his followers - that he has never been on a train, has never owned a passport or indeed ever been abroad
Kaleb Cooper and Jeremy Clarkson sharing a pint at Hawkstone Brewery
He said: 'Jeremy actually has a few pigs now. He bought four breeding sows last year - as you'll see on series three. He's got about 50 weaners on the floor - those are the piglets which haven't been weaned off their mum for fattening up.
'It hurts me to say this but I am going to try and say it anyway. He's actually, erm, he's not a bad pig farmer. That hurt me to say. He is actually really good. Annoyingly. It's that one job I can leave him to do on his own and not get worried about him.
'For example he'll go down to the pig pens. And as he gets there, he comes running back up. And he says: "Kaleb, you'll never guess what? One has had eight piglets. I reckon two of them are actually breeding stock. Because the other six probably aren't quite there. So we'll keep those two to keep the bloodline going." And I'm like okay. Well done. But it's lovely to have a proud owner (Clarkson) for me because it's like the one job I have helped him with and taught him and he can just go and do it now and not have to have me holding his hand.'
Kaleb also revealed at his first ever meeting with Clarkson, he wasn't so impressed with him: 'I remember to this day, I was coming up the drive in the tractor. At the time he had just moved into a little cottage on the side of the farm. He had recently blown up his house. As I am sitting there in the tractor he comes up and he stops me.
'He says 'Can I ask you one favour?' I said: 'Yeah of course what is it?' He said: 'Could you drive a little bit slower past my house. My other half's cat runs around here and I don't want you to run it over.' I said: 'Yeah yeah sure thing.' Kaleb continued: 'To this very day now, I drive as fast as I can past the house just to piss him off.'
The story brought a loud burst of laughter and hoots and whistles from the crowd.
The audience were completely on board, even when in the second half, Kaleb's lack of life experience out of Chipping Norton seemed to hamper the show and he leaned heavily on a sketch which just didn't work about what sort of haircut he would look good with (supported by some dodgy photoshopped images of himself).
There seemed to be some fairly desperate time-filling towards the final curtain. A section on 'What's my favourite farm animal' for example seemed to go on forever. But again, with the four thousand fully refreshed from an interval break at the cider bar, they remained fully in support.
The final Q and A provided a good opportunity for Kaleb to offer his services up to ITV talent scouts for I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, in the unlikely event that they had been in the audience.
The questions were meant to be random ones by audience members. However, having been at the same show in Bath, Somerset, myself last month, I could tell they were mostly (not all) just fake planted questions designed just to get a very specific point across with their resulting answers.
So to paraphrase, Kaleb is definitely up for I'm A Celebrity and he is apparently also interested in plugging tractor brands. Another 'random' question resulted in Kaleb telling us that he was flattered that an audience member said he could even replace Clarkson on his eponymous Amazon Prime show.
All of which left me wondering whether this very special young man, who was recently plucked from complete obscurity, now has grand plans of his own outside of his famous Diddly Squat double-act.