'Jeremy calls me 'foetus' and I call him 'fossil'. He never admits his mistakes.' As Clarkson's Farm returns, what Kaleb REALLY thinks of his boss...

Extreme heat and rain have decimated his crops, the council has closed down his farm restaurant after just a few weeks and tragically he now can’t afford to keep his beloved cows. 

It’s all looking desperate as Clarkson’s Farm, the hit Amazon Prime Video show that follows Jeremy Clarkson’s bumbling attempts to manage his 1,000-acre plot in the Cotswolds, returns for a third series.

‘I love the cows making loud noises – it cheers my heart,’ says Jeremy. ‘But all the effort we’ve put in and we’re back to square one. With the restaurant shut down, we could no longer afford to keep all the cows. We could hang on to the calves to fatten them up but their mums have to go.’

The hugely anticipated third series promises all the usual pandemonium for the now-familiar cast of characters, including plucky farmer Kaleb Cooper, Jeremy’s stunning ‘b***breaker’ girlfriend Lisa Hogan, cautious land agent Charlie Ireland and farm hand Gerald Cooper.

Strap in for plenty of shiny new machinery being crashed into stone walls or stuck in thick mud, epic arguments, blackberry picking with a hoover, jam-making, dramas with chainsaws and much falling foul of rules and regulations in the UK’s most-watched Amazon original.

Jeremy Clarkson (right) clutching a piglet with his farm manager Kaleb Cooper at Diddly Squat Farm in the Cotswolds

Set on Jeremy’s Diddly Squat Farm, so-called because of the losses it makes, the first two series followed his hapless attempts to turn his land into a profitable farm by rearing sheep – but the cost of shearing them was more than their wool sold for. He made just £114 in the first year. Then came the beef cows, but after the council closed his restaurant it’s no longer economical to rear them.

But help is seemingly at hand as Diddly Squat becomes Piggly Squat with the arrival of sows and boars from a rare Oxfordshire breed called Sandy And Black. The plan is that a litter of piglets will be more profitable than one cow producing one calf.

And for once his farm help and foil Kaleb Cooper is all for it. ‘I hate to admit this, but actually Jeremy’s not a bad pig farmer,’ says Kaleb, 25, who’s become a star in his own right thanks to his witty take on life in two books, The World According To Kaleb and Britain According To Kaleb: The Wonderful World Of Country Life. ‘He likes the pigs and has a great interest in them.’

Jeremy’s plan is to make use of wasted woodland where the pigs can graze and ‘truffle about turning up acorns’. But a circumspect Charlie warns, ‘Only in an idyllic Winnie-the-Pooh world,’ because pigs need constant monitoring. ‘They’re foragers but they’re more like a JCB...’

Unfortunately the grand arrival of the pigs takes place when Kaleb is off sick with the flu, meaning Jeremy and Lisa have to build the pig huts and fencing themselves, working in lashing rain late into the night. 

‘I was in bed two days straight. I just couldn’t move,’ says Kaleb. ‘But there was Jeremy FaceTiming me asking how to make the huts. I just said, “Leave me alone. I’m too tired. I’m feeling ill.” Then I came back to work to see the mess he’d made. But he never admits his mistakes.

‘The jobs go much quicker without Jeremy so I try not to tell him if I’m going combine harvesting, for example. But then he’ll see me from the house and get on a tractor to join me. He can’t even control his own Labradors. They listen to me but they don’t listen to Jeremy. I call them posh man’s dogs.’

Jeremy’s aim to show the ‘mud, blood and barbarism’ of the British farmer’s struggle is what’s helped the show become such a hit. And the pig-rearing proves to be a heartbreaking example as there’s a devastating piglet death toll, and Jeremy is clearly choked when he delivers a batch to the abattoir.

Jeremy and girlfriend Lisa Hogan (pictured) struggle to build the pig huts and fencing by themselves when Kaleb is off sick

‘Every farmer gets emotional yet they know they have a job to do. But they want to give every animal the best life possible,’ says Kaleb, who’s just completed his first national tour with his show The World According To Kaleb – Kaleb Goes On Tour.

Part of the appeal of the series is seeing local-born Kaleb standing up to Jeremy, admonishing him in no uncertain terms for failing to plant crops in a straight line, crashing into walls, buying flashy but useless machinery and, in this series, making a bodge job of a woodland dam.

Insults fly, with Kaleb branding Clarkson a ‘f***ing idiot’ and Jeremy calling Kaleb a ‘rural halfwit’ and ‘moron’. ‘We even argue in the pub,’ says Kaleb. ‘On TV you only see about 20 per cent of the arguments we actually have.

‘It can be really bad, but ten minutes later we’re fine, having a cup of tea. That’s what friendship’s about. We have the same sense of humour but I’m the younger generation and he’s the older generation. He calls me “foetus” and I call him “fossil”.’

No wonder Kaleb has been ‘promoted’ and now has an office. ‘I was made farm manager which is stupid because I’m already farm manager. It’s made no difference except I now have an office. Not like Jeremy’s which is lovely with a log burner. I’m in the barn with no heat and a leak. But I’m mostly outside, anyway.’

Jeremy’s also created a profit and loss board between the arable side of the farm, which Kaleb is in charge of, and Jeremy’s side, which is the untapped areas like hedgerows, woodlands and pigs. Needless to say that among the big outgoings is a vet’s bill for a poorly piglet Lisa took under her wing while Jeremy was away.

Kaleb points out that they’d have been better off putting it down. ‘But Lisa wears the trousers. She works incredibly hard running the farm shop, and you often see her out on a tractor. She’s a proper b***breaker.’

This season sees Kaleb given a run for his money though, with a slice of land handed over to organic farmer Andy Cato of music act Groove Armada, who tries his own method of rejuvenating the soil. And Jeremy relishes the jealousy Kaleb feels about this.

‘New ideas are good, but what annoys me is that I love that farm and I’ve worked on it for nearly eight years now – in every field. Then suddenly someone comes in and starts drilling my fields. But Jeremy loves to wind me up,’ Kaleb chuckles.

The last laugh might be on Jeremy though. ‘Who knows what the future holds,’ teases Kaleb. ‘I did an April Fool’s prank that I was going to be the new presenter of Countryfile. It would be amazing to have my own show, but in the meantime I’ve got series four of Clarkson’s Farm to get on with and, hopefully, series five.’

• Clarkson’s Farm series 3 launches on May 3 on Amazon Prime Video