Clarkson’s Farm star says out of ‘sheer boredom’ he has bought a £3,000 aluminium desk, a goods lift, laser pen, two torches, a coffee machine and a ‘poster with a Lexus LFA on it’
Jeremy Clarkson has moaned he is spending a fortune gadget-shopping out of ‘sheer boredom’ because he has nothing to do – despite having TEN jobs.
He runs a farm, brewery, shop and pub, hosts three TV shows – Clarkson’s Farm, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and its Hot Seat spin-off – and writes three newspaper columns.
But he says far from being a ‘one-man blizzard of productivity and action’ he is no ‘human whirlwind’.
There is currently no filming, he cannot plant anything on the farm due to rain, his cows are locked down by TB and dips out of brewery business because he cannot understand the Line Of Duty-style acronyms used in board meetings.
The folk who run the pub are ‘vastly’ more experienced than him, girlfriend Lisa Hogan ‘rolls her eyes’ if tries to interfere in the shop and his writing ‘doesn’t really take that long’.
Clarkson, 65, said he has no hobbies other than ‘drinking’ and is ‘getting an idea of what retirement might look like’.
“I wake in the morning at seven, check my diary and there is nothing to do all day. It’s terrifying. And eye-wateringly expensive,” he said.
Out of ‘sheer boredom’ he bought a £3,000 aluminium desk, a goods lift, laser pen, two torches, a coffee machine and a ‘poster with a Lexus LFA on it’.
“This afternoon I shall probably go to the local antiques shop and buy an occasional table or a drinks globe,” he said. “And this evening I’ll almost certainly go online and get myself a Unimog with a crane on the back.
“The spending has been relentless. I have always found the act of shopping vaguely revolting. That’s why my watch is 25 years old and the jumper I’m wearing today has several holes in it.
“And yet here I am today, with a laser pen I don’t need, sitting at a £3,000 designer desk, gazing at a new cheese plant and thinking very hard about fitting my electric gates with a loudspeaker that plays Ode To Joy every time they open.
“I think the problem is that apart from drinking I don’t have a hobby.”
Clarkson said he has ‘always been rather suspicious of people who have hobbies’.
To him everyone who ‘plays golf or does watercolour painting was at some point in their childhood caught pleasuring themselves by their mother who said, ‘Stop doing that and get yourself a hobby’’.
He said he wished now he ‘had been caught’ by his own mum because ‘I’d now be looking forward to an evening arranging my new Plate 77 Penny Red stamps’.
“Instead I’ll be opening a bottle of wine and trying to find a box set I’ve not yet watched. And if that’s retirement, it can f*** off,” he said. So please God let it stop raining so I can do some work.”