Jeremy Clarkson on being refused planning permission for farm
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Jeremy Clarkson, 62, is worried about trespassers stealing from his Cotswolds farm – but it’s not his costly tractors or supercars that he’s concerned about. Instead, The Grand Tour host confessed he fears a new trend in the South of England that could cause something much more unusual to be plundered from his land.
Unlike Range Rovers, orchids don’t have steering locks and alarms
Jeremy Clarkson
Speaking of a “spate of thefts” that recently happened in Kent and Sussex wildflower meadows, he lamented: “[People] go to bed at night, happy that a rare lady’s slipper orchid, worth about £2,000 to the hobbyists, is growing on their land, and they wake in the morning to find nothing but a hole in the ground.”
He pointed out: “Unlike Range Rovers, orchids don’t have steering locks and alarms.”
Jeremy claims that, according to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, thieves of rare flowers could receive up to six months in jail.
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However, the former Top Gear motorist admits that a penalty that extreme is unlikely to happen.
He cited an occasion in 1956 when a rare type of orchid was plundered in the New Forest, and subsequently ended up extinct.
It isn’t that Jeremy was unable to empathise, having once tearfully pressurised his father to drive all the way from Doncaster to London to fill up with Esso petrol, just so that he could earn the collectable football coins offered to its buyers.
However, he continued: “There are orchid collectors who are so determined to have the equivalent of that Kilmarnock football coin that they’ll stop at nothing to get it.”
Meanwhile, Jeremy says he has recently been tempted to steal too.
His theft of choice would be even more unusual than orchids – to the astonishment of those around him, he has been hankering after soil.
The Clarkson’s Farm star claimed he was “consumed with envy” at the “lushness” of the earth in Hampshire, which he described as far superior to his own down by Chipping Norton.
“Certainly the money’s good. It would take a skilled operator no more than 15 minutes to fill a truck, and that load would be worth maybe £2,000,” he exclaimed in The Times.
“So in a single night I could earn 50 grand!” the tractor-driving TV host continued with enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, according to Jeremy, an orchid exists in Yorkshire which is so rare it’s monitored around the clock and kept in a metal cage.
The orchids on his own land are less “impressive” – but now he has revealed he is also fearful for the future of the wheat on his land.
“How long will it be before thieves start to come after [it], because thanks to the cost of fertiliser, one ear alone is now more valuable than a Rwandan water lily?” he pressed.
Meanwhile Jeremy claimed in a Slovenian radio interview this month that The Grand Tour will be returning to TV screens soon.
He has suggested a wait of around six months while the recent footage he, James May and Richard Hammond filmed is edited.
His recent Instagram posts have showed snippets from the wrap party, with revellers drinking beers and gin and tonics while enjoying songs such as Stevie Wonder’s Superstition.
The trio flew to Europe by private jet, before embarking on a several week long tour including Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia – and now Jeremy is heading back to his beloved farm, making it a little easier for him to guard it from orchid and wheat thieves.
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