British TV presenter and media personality Jeremy Clarkson, best known for hosting the motoring shows Top Gear and The Grand Tour, has revealed he has been diagnosed with an aggressive type of prostate cancer.
Clarkson, 66, certainly one of the U.K.’s most well-known and high-profile TV figures, shared the news during filming of his hit Amazon show Clarkson’s Farm, in episodes that aired on Wednesday.
“I’ve got cancer,” Clarkson told two of the show’s other major characters in a sombre scene shot last 12 months.
“I had a medical, remember, back in May? I disappeared off the opposite week and I had a biopsy and it’s cancer, and it’s aggressive.”
Clarkson revealed that the cancer was caught early and that he had since undergone a procedure to remove 10 per cent of his prostate.
“If I hadn’t have gotten myself checked out and they hadn’t caught the issue early, this might well have been my last harvest,” he said. “It’s only because they did catch it early, there’s every hope that I’ll be harvesting this farm for a lot of, a few years to return.”
In an Instagram video posted Tuesday, ahead of the episodes airing, Clarkson warned viewers they were in for a “difficult watch.”
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“Ordinarily, we try to maintain the show bucolic, charming and cheerful,” he said. “But the ultimate two episodes, which drop in the course of the night tonight, are … they’re none of those things, really,” he told his followers.
Clarkson, a controversial figure, found global fame as certainly one of three presenters of the BBC’s Top Gear, which he fronted for 13 years alongside James May and Richard Hammond, but lost his job after he punched a member of the production team in 2015. The trio then moved to Amazon, where they hosted The Grand Tour, which ran from 2016 to 2024.
He subsequently began making his successful documentary-style series Clarkson’s Farm, also on Amazon, which follows his often haphazard and comedic foray into operating Diddly Squat Farm just outside the idyllic English village of Chadlington, Oxfordshire.
The Diddly Squat Farm Shop near Chipping Norton belonging to TV star Jeremy Clarkson.
James D. Morgan // Getty Images
His partner, Lisa, who runs the farm’s shop, and several other recurring characters have gained popularity among the many British public for his or her humorous squabbles, tendency to muddle through the challenges of farming and bureaucracy, and heartfelt connection to the farm’s animals.
The shop is very popular and commonly attracts large crowds, who often line up outside. Clarkson also owns and operates a pub in the world called the Farmer’s Dog that serves food, drinks and ingredients exclusively grown or raised in Britain.
Customers queue outside the Diddly Squat Farm Shop, near Chipping Norton, belonging to TV star Jeremy Clarkson in Chipping Norton, Oxford, England, on Aug. 13, 2022.
James D. Morgan // Getty Images
Addressing his diagnosis from a hospital bed through the final episode of Season 5, he said: “I don’t know what’s going to occur. But look, what I desired to say was: if that is all successful, I’ll see you for Season 6, and if it isn’t, I won’t. Take care, everyone.”
— with files from Reuters
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