ARTICLE AD BOX
Kaleb Cooper might be the breakout star of Jeremy Clarkson’s Prime Video series Clarkson’s Farm – but there’s a new farmer in Chipping Norton ready to win over the hearts of viewers.
In the newly released fourth season of the series, which follows the ups and downs at Clarkson's farm, the former Top Gear presenter is in crisis after his farm manager, 26-year-old Cooper, has left to tour his one-man show. While Cooper is away entertaining crowds each night, Clarkson is struggling to run the farm alone when his tractor stops working and there are tonnes of fertiliser waiting to be applied to the soil.
Clarkson arranges for a freelance contractor to step into Cooper’s shoes, who turns out to be 24-year-old Harriet Cowan, a farmer, part-time nurse and TikTokker from Derbyshire.
When Cowan arrives on the Diddly Squat farm – with her hair perfectly coiffed, large false eyelashes on and makeup applied – she smirks as she admits that she’s never seen Clarkson’s Farm. She also doesn’t seem phased by the cameras that follow her as she restores the farm to its usual order – planting barley in the fields, cutting the hedges and tending to the farm animals.
Cowan, whose father runs the family farm and mother is a nurse, is a TikTok farming sensation with 38,000 followers and more than 950,000 views on her most popular video, which shows her at work driving a tractor. She documents her day-to-day life working on her father’s farm, sharing sweet pictures of the animals and jokes about farming.
In the series, the young farmer quickly makes an impression on Clarkson with her farming expertise and witty banter. In episode one, Clarkson gives Cowan a tour of the farm when he points out a Neolithic fort, which he explains is “4000 years old”, to which Cowan quips: “Nearly as old as you.” She even makes an attempt at trimming Clarkson’s unruly eyebrows.
When Clarkson shares that Cooper is on tour, and jokes that he’s famous like “Julian Clary or Lenny Henry”, Cowan says that she doesn’t know who either of the celebrities are, and seems to irritate Clarkson when she asks whether Henry is “the bed man”, referring to the Comic Relief host’s Premier Inn adverts.
In another moment when Cowan is fixing a tractor, Clarkson remarks to the camera: “Those eyelashes, and what she’s doing, don’t necessarily go together do they?”
Clarkson warms to Cowan as the episode goes on, calling her a “star” and praising her farming knowledge. “She’s brilliant,” he tells his farming contractor Charlie Ireland.
“She’s a TikTokker. She’s already been TikTokking at Diddly Squat! I don’t really understand,” he says, clearly puzzled.
Cowan previously graduated from the University of Derby, where she studied nursing. She was named her town's Young Farmers spokesperson and continues to use social media to highlight the realities of working on a farm. She has been vocal during the farmers’ protests in response to Labour changes to inheritance tax, which has seen thousands of farmers gathering in Westminster in recent months.
The budding TV star confirmed her role on Clarkson’s Farm in an Instagram post shared in May, writing: “Ekkkk something exciting is coming on 23 May.”
While Cooper is only absent for a few episodes, he returns to the series while basking in the success of his tour, thanks to his newfound fame from the programme.
Cooper became an instant star after Clarkson purchased the Diddly Squat farm in Chipping Norton, where Cooper already worked under the previous owner. The farmer was kept on by Clarkson and quickly became his right-hand man as he showed Clarkson the ropes of running a working farm.
Cooper has been benefiting in numerous ways from the success of the series. As well as his speaking tour, The World According to Kaleb, he has also written several books, including It’s a Farming Thing, Britain According to Kaleb and The World According to Kaleb. He previously revealed that he was once earning just 50 pence an hour due to the unpredictable nature of farming costs and profit margin, but has since become a millionaire.
Clarkson’s Farm returns to Prime Video on 23 May.
English (US) ·