Gerald Cooper, the star of Clarkson’s Farm, underwent surgery after discovering cancer.
The farmer has been a key component of the Amazon Prime Video series from its inception, serving as a farmer, dry stone waller, and ‘chief of security’ at Diddly Squat Farm.
His closeness with Jeremy Clarkson is obvious, even if he occasionally struggles to comprehend Gerald’s thick West Country accent.
In the opening episode of the third season of Clarkson’s Farm, taped last year, Jeremy receives a phone call notifying him that Gerald, 74, is ill.
‘Gerald’s got cancer. Oh s**t,’ Jeremy told the camera crew.
In the following episode, Jeremy said Gerald had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Jeremy, 64, and Kaleb Cooper, 25, talk about attempting to help their friend at the farm while trying to repair a wall, which Gerald typically does.
‘I’ve been phoning around, doctors and things I know, and his odds are really good but it’s scaring him to death,’ Jeremy said. ‘He doesn’t understand, you know that’ responded Kaleb.
Jeremy added: ‘I know he doesn’t understand and he’s bewildered because, for obvious reasons, somebody said, “Look, I’m sorry it’s cancer”, and that’s all he heard. He’s desperately upset, terrified. Poor man.’ They then called their friend ‘strong’ and ‘amazing’.
Later in the series, they provide encouraging news on his recovery.
‘He had his op three days ago. Have you talked to him?’ Jeremy asks the farm manager.
Kaleb replied: ‘Yeah I spoke to him two days ago, I’m going to take him some pork. He wants some belly pork so he must be feeling a little bit better. He seems happier now as well.’
Jeremy provided a further positive update: ‘The word is he’s on the mend.’
‘That’s what we like to hear, there’s a few walls that fell down so we need him to be back at it,’ joked Kaleb. Jeremy agreed: ‘I know we do want him back.’
Gerald has been working on the farm for five decades, and Jeremy has talked lovingly of their time together on the Chipping Norton property.
‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand what he’s talking about, because he’s usually talking about Manchester United,’ Jeremy previously told Oxford Mail.
‘He’s fantastic. We’ve known each other for a very long time. He’s 72, also never been outside the village, but has worked on this farm for 50 years.’
Gerald was even the original inspiration for the series, as Jeremy thought he was ‘such a character’ that would ‘be great on TV’.
As he met more individuals in the farming business, he understood there were lots of locals with small-screen potential, and he didn’t believe previous shows accurately represented what a rural profession was all about.
‘I realised nobody had a clue what farming was really about. And I thought we could do wheat, barley, [oilseed] rape on a perfectly straightforward, ordinary 1,000-acre farm. And that’s where the idea came from,’ he told Farmers Weekly.
The third season, which also stars Jeremy’s partner Lisa Hogan and property expert Charlie Ireland, finds the farm welcoming pigs.
Sadly, a number of them die devastating Jeremy and Lisa. Speaking to press, Clarkson shared: ‘You don’t say, “Let’s buy some pigs and hope they die,” I’ve always liked pigs.’.
‘My mother used to buy me toy pigs every Christmas and birthdays,’ he went on, recalling his ‘fondness’ for pigs.
‘I thought it would be fun to have them, and then they just died in alarming numbers.’
Clarkson’s Farm season 3 is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video
