A couple of things came together this week. I had the pleasure of enjoying 35 degrees in Brussels. The joy of the odious metro, the brutalist main station and the wandering herds of tourists. Overhead one couple saying do you know that they have a statue of a little boy having a wee. I flinched because I genuinely thought everyone in the world knew of the Manneken Pis[1]. How can anyone not know?
It was a Canadian who prompted me to undo a prejudice of mine. Loving the air conditioning in the hotel, I looked to my iPad for late evening entertainment. There was the man – Clarkson. Irritating prankster and motorhead. Not known for meaningful commentary. I’d resisted watching his series Clarkson’s Farm[2] on the basis that I’d want to throw bricks at the screen.
This week I watched the first series. Made pre-COVID. Fine, it’s not a serious documentary about the trials and tribulations of British farming in the 21st century. True to form it’s pure entertainment. Edited highlights of comic moments and true to form tomfoolery.
My mind is changed. I started as a cynic. Here’s a moneymaking scheme for a wealthy landowner who made riches in the television world. To here’s a have a go spirit let loose on what people often assume is easy but, in fact, is mighty hard to do. The series is an engaging journey of discovery all but made for the small screen.
How can you not make a profit out of a highly desirable spread of a thousand acres in some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain? Experience counts and when you have none, it counts even more. Watching the lights come on in Clarkson’s head is well worth a watch.
Farming with drone shots and a camera crew following is obviously not the real world. Nicely edited highlights tell the story on the page. Put aside any cynicism. The show has a way of story telling that brings out the awkward, funny and frustrating reality of farming. Folly, errors and mishaps are all part of what happens in that colourful industry.
There was a world pre-COVID. Going back even further, there was a world before the fireworks of the year 2000. It was summed up by the brothers Gallagher. Yes, I am talking about the getting back together of Oasis. A band that was a bit more than an everyday rock band.
Having survived watching last week’s televising of the one millionth Glastonbury festival (exaggeration), the memories of the “real” contrast with the artificial, bland and merely controversial for the sake of it. Those years in the mid-1990s were good ones, if only I’m using the trick of selective memory. Remember when people who supported leaving Europe were strange and social media was only a rare tacky e-mail.
Maybe I’m getting more Clarkson-like as time flies.
John Vincent 