TV personality Jeremy Clarkson has disclosed that he had to involve the police after his farm was targeted by thieves.
The former Top Gear presenter, 64, bought Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire back in 2008 and it has since became a well known piece of land thanks to becoming the focus of his popular Amazon Prime series, Clarkson’s Farm.
Following the growing popularity of his farm, Jeremy has still seen himself became the target of thieves looking to take some of his wealth for themselves. The 64-year-old has revealed robbers in the area have been eyeing up his farm and livestock and even utilised drones to survey the area.
“Two weeks ago, five men in a van came into the farmyard. They checked out the security cameras and asked Kaleb]Cooper] how many dogs were on the site”, Jeremy writes in his latest newspaper column. After reporting the incident to the police, Jeremy says he was informed that the van’s plates had been cloned. More alarmingly, he noted that a drone had been spotted on two separate nights in the past week, scouting the house and the farmyard.
Following advice from the police to ensure his security measures were ‘ up to scratch’, Jeremy claimed to have the perfect solution to deter any robbers – guinea fowl. In his column for The Sun, he shared that his daughter and son-in-law gifted him 12 of these birds at Christmas as payback for the consistently noisy toys he buys for his granddaughter.
Jeremy is confident that the guinea fowl, with their incredibly loud calls (which he likened to Nasa testing their 37million horsepower Space Shuttle engines), would be enough to scare off any potential thieves. When asked about the adequacy of his security measures, he confidently asserted: “Oh trust me on this. They are. Anyone who tries to burgle us is going to have their eardrums turned into a blood-speckled gooey mush”.
Last year, Jeremy angrily reacted to being reminded he once said he bought his farm in 2008 in order to avoid a hefty inheritance tax bill. The controversial TV presenter snapped at Victoria Derbyshire during a tense interview at the fraught farmers ‘ rally in Westminster in November.
Amid a fleet of tractors and incensed farmers, Jeremy stood firmly with his agricultural allies, which have become central to his life following the success of his hit series. But when probed by the BBC journalist Victoria about whether his attendance was self-serving, Jeremy retorted irritably: “Typical BBC. You people”! Tensions flared as Victoria queried the motive behind his protest, asking: “So it’s not about you, your farm and to avoid inheritance attack”? Jeremy sarcastically remarked, rolling his eyes, “Classic BBC there. Classic”.
To which Victoria quipped, “Is it”?, referencing a Sunday Times piece where the father-of-three discussed the tax advantages of owning a farm. Challenging the insinuation that his Oxfordshire farm purchase was driven by tax reasons, Jeremy defended his motives as grounded in his passion for country pursuits such as shooting.
An exasperated Clarkson then repeated his critique, “Typical BBC. You people”, and uttered to the onlookers, “Are you listening to this”? after Victoria reiterated Rachel Reeves ‘ statement that the inheritance tax would help fund public services.
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