Jeremy Clarkson says Clarkson’s Farm crew ‘worried about paying the mortgage’ after wrapping filming on show

“We wrapped season six of Clarkson’s Farm final yesterday, and season seven is kind of, ‘What are we going to do?'”

Mr Clarkson revealed he is already working on a new project, but stopped short of offering any details about exactly what it was.

| AMAZON

“We’re currently thinking about what we do after Clarkson’s Farm, and it’s going to have to be something bigger to stand out and protect us from this onslaught from [social media content] underneath,” he said. “It has to be unbelievably ambitious.”

Given the uncertainty, the former Top Gear host painted a bleak picture of the employment landscape facing television professionals once production wraps.

With between 35 and 40 crew members from Clarkson’s Farm now without work, he said they are “sitting at home thinking, ‘How are we going to pay our mortgage?'”

“I know a huge amount of producers that I’ve worked with over the years, really, really clever people, decent, sensible, hard-working people, who cannot find work in the industry,” Mr Clarkson said.

His opinions on how to combat this centres on a “fewer, bigger, better” approach to commissioning in a bid to combat dwindling numbers caused by social media.

Mr Clarkson even suggested every major British broadcaster could unite under a single streaming platform.

“I think they are [going to merge], I actually believe more than that,” he said. “I actually think that television in this country can at least survive and should do this, the whole lot of us; BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel Four, Channel Five.”

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host used gardening TV as an example of one area of broadcasting under particular threat, especially in the wake of Monty Don’s exit from the BBC’s Gardeners’ World.

“Anyone can do a gardening thing on social media or cookery,” he said. “It’s very difficult to make a television show work unless you’re cooking on the Moon or you know, doing something incredible.”

Mr Clarkson’s worrying verdict on the state of the British job market comes just 48 hours after he published a scathing attack on the prime minister, Andy Burnham.

Branding him “the most small-minded and timid leader we’ve ever had,” Mr Clarkson ridiculed what he sees as a lack of grand ambition from the new PM.

In his Sunday Times column, he ripped into Mr Burnham’s focus on technical education and his pledge to “give every young person a hard hat.” Mr Clarkson joked that under Mr Burnham’s leadership during humanity’s earliest explorations, “we’d all still be in there. Safe, but bored to tears.”

| AMAZON

As well as filming for Clarkson’s Farm, Mr Clarkson has also been wading into the ongoing saga engulfing singer Ed Sheeran.

Mr Clarkson has publicly defended the A Team singer against calls for cancellation following the dismissal of rapper Macklemore from his tour for political gestures during his support set.

Macklemore used his act to call for “Free Palestine”, which resulted in Mr Sheeran’s tour organisers and venue owners on the tour from calling for the rapper’s removal.

Mr Sheeran vowed to continue his tour, sparking outrage from pro-Palestinian activists and famous faces such as Roger Waters, Nadiya Hussain, Paloma Faith, and more.

|

AMAZON PRIME

After Ms Hussain shared a video on Instagram accusing Mr Sheeran of shedding “white tears” during his emotional on-stage apology over the Macklemore controversy, Mr Clarkson had his say.

“‘White tears?’ I’m at a loss, I’m afraid. I have literally no idea what’s meant by this,” Clarkson wrote in his latest column for The Sun.

He signed off: “Lefties do get their knickers in a right old twist, don’t they?”

The 66-year-old farmer had previously rallied to Mr Sheeran’s defence in an earlier column, branding the pile-on against the singer as “bullying” and arguing that the 35-year-old was being punished not for anything he said but for choosing to remain silent on the conflict.