I’m losing my hair working on Clarkson’s Farm, says Kaleb Cooper
Break-out star of Amazon Prime series says stress of running Diddly Squat is taking its toll
The breakout young star of Clarkson’s Farm has claimed that the hit show is making him go bald.
Farmer Kaleb Cooper, 25, has become one of the best-loved characters on TV thanks to his act on the Amazon Prime series that documents Jeremy Clarkson’s attempt to run a 400-hectare farm in Oxfordshire.
However, he has now admitted that being the Top Gear host’s farming contractor is negatively affecting his hairline, saying: “I have lost about 30.4 per cent of my hair from working with him.”
He told BBC Merseyside about the stress he faced helping his Grand Tour boss run Diddly Squat, but he said: “I think there’s a farmer in him somewhere. I’ve just got to try and break it out of him. And I’m working on it, I’m doing my best.”
Clarkson, 63, presents the Clarkson’s Farm series on Amazon, winning support from across the farming community and leading a campaign to repeal “mountains” of red tape affecting agriculture.
The veteran broadcaster bought the Diddly Squat Farm in 2008, but it was run by a villager until his retirement in 2019, after which Clarkson decided to see if he could run it himself.
Cooper, who worked for the farm’s previous manager before Clarkson took over operations, joined the presenter along for the ride.
“I was actually working on the farm for the previous three years prior to Clarkson’s Farm series one coming around,” he said, adding: “So I was actually there doing my day job.
“It all comes around, and I remember the director came up to me and went, ‘oh, how do you feel about Jeremy taking on the farm?’; I said, ‘he’s not, I am.’ And they said, ‘oh, no, no’ Jeremy’s going to come back and farm it itself.’”
Speaking about his breakout fame and his newly-published second book, ‘Britain According to Kaleb: The Wonderful World of Country Life’, the farmer said: “It is amazing and it feels really good… because I just play a part in something that’s really big anyway.
“But at the end of the day, I’m the same person I was when I started series one. And if I can inspire a young person to get into farming or pursue a career in farming, that’s what it’s all about.”
Cooper’s deadpan wit and humorous observations on the show have enamoured him to the nation, from calling sheep “suicidal morons” to his take on Clarkson running the farm: “There are two types of farming, unless you count whatever it is Jeremy thinks he’s doing.”
The new release follows the success of his first book, ‘The World According To Kaleb’, which he published last year. He described the new book as being about “his opinions on various different traditions that I’ve been going on for years and years.”
This includes Wife Carrying Championships in Dorking and cheese rolling in Gloucestershire. He has just finished filming the third season of Clarkson’s Farm with the Top Gear presenter, and there are rumours that Clarkson is in talks with Amazon over a fourth.
The Cooper, from Chipping Norton, said: “Hopefully, it’ll keep going, but who knows what the time will tell.
“Now I feel old. I’m 25 years old now. I was 21 when we started filming this. I didn’t have a beard. Now, I’ve got a beard and I’ve got about four chest hairs now as well.”
