Jeremy Clarkson's Farm has rehabilitated an imperfect star and changed views of farming – Stephen Jardine

Jeremy Clarkson's show about his efforts to make it as a farmer has rehabilitated an imperfect star and changed views of agriculture

Usually, the bigger a celebrity gets, the more precious they become. Reality contestants who once ate maggots just to be on TV start demanding gold taps in the dressing rooms when they have their own chat show. The more famous they become, the less they want to do for the fame and cash.

Jeremy Clarkson is the opposite. When he left the BBC after punching a producer, he immediately signed a deal with Amazon reportedly worth at least £200 million. They were so eager to get him, he could have sat back and enjoyed an easy life, flying to exotic places and driving supercars. Instead he chose to put himself in the muck, literally.

The latest series of “Clarkson’s Farm” follows his ongoing efforts to turn a profit from agriculture in modern Britain. His first year of hapless toil earned him a measly profit of £114. That might not matter because of his TV deal but he still works hard for his money.

Jeremy Clarkson, seen with his partner and Clarkson's Farm co-star Lisa Hogan, has helped people understand the realities of farming (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

In the newest episode, he and his wife were left in tears after their attempt to diversify into pig breeding ended up with multiple dead piglets and a sow who also didn’t make it. All of this is played out on a freezing night in driving rain with only a torch and a vet on the phone for help.

Others with his fame choose to be preened and cossetted but Clarkson has literally chosen blood, sweat and tears as his latest project. This is a show without make-up or flattering lighting, his straining shirts and crumpled features leave him nowhere to hide and he looks every day of his 64 years on this planet.

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And that’s what makes it so appealing. In the week of the New York Met Ball where pointless celebrities mainline Wegovy to fit into dresses, Clarkson is out there in his leaking boots and faecal-stained waxed jacket toiling away to bring us the reality of farming.

He’s said he hopes the series will help viewers understand how hard it is to keep this country fed. The next time you think the price of a bacon sandwich is a bit high, take a look at his attempts to rear pigs. Being a farmer comes with no trigger warnings.

Quite apart from the time and the back-breaking toil, there is the emotional investment and the crushing disappointment when it ends badly. Farmers I know say it has already done more for the industry than every other farming TV show there has ever been.

That’s down to Clarkson’s willingness to be seen at his worst: wet, vulnerable and struggling under the weight of petty bureaucracy that seems to exist simply for the sake of it. He’s far from perfect.

From hitting a colleague to his sexist rant about the Duchess of Sussex, he is a human version of a bull in a china shop but his humanity is his saving grace, never more so than in his apology to Meghan. “We’ve all been there, I guess. In that precise moment when we suddenly realise we’ve completely messed up,” he said.

He’s a man who could have been cancelled and consigned to TV history many times but kneeling in the mud, tear-stained, cradling a dead piglet and for once lost for his words, his rehabilitation seems complete.