Jeremy Clarkson reveals extreme measures in place to stop ‘thieves’ at Diddly Squat

Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that he’s installed serious security equipment at Diddly Squat to stop thieves from stealing his diesel tanks.

The TV presenter’s farming experience has been well documented on Amazon Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm, which began airing in 2021.

While the ex Top Gear host bought the 1,000-acre land in 2008, he took over running it seven years ago and has since won two National Television Awards and released five series of the programme.

In a new column, Clarkson opened up about some of the situations he stumbles upon on country lanes around his property – revealing that suspicious vehicles can sometimes belong to diesel thieves.

“I know all you town people think theft is a problem where you live but you guys don’t know the meaning of the word,” he wrote in The Times.

“In the countryside, everything is stolen all the time: quad bikes, hedge clippers, chainsaws, GPS systems and especially diesel. And doubly especially now it costs more than myrrh.”

He went onto say that the security measures he has in place to protect his diesel tanks are safer than “the three most secure places on earth”: Fort Knox in Kentucky, the Federal Reserve in New York and the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard.

“All three are as leaky as an allotment shed compared to the diesel tanks on my farm. You know those sentry guns they used in Aliens? It’s that, and it has to be.”

The presenter-turned-farmer also shared how he also struggles with hare coursers: people who unleash their dogs, often lurchers, on hares in countryside fields and then often live stream it for gamblers online.

Clarkson admitted that he doesn’t confront the coursers as they’ll “set about your head with a tyre iron” if accosted.

He added that if country lane loiterers are not thieves or hare coursers, they can often be fly-tippers or even doggers – people who engage in sexual acts in public. The presenter even drove up alongside one car to discover a young man who stopped “frantically pleasuring himself” to chat to him.

“Eventually, he sensed that he was being observed, wound down his window and said ‘Oh my God. You’re Jeremy Clarkson.’ Having agreed that I was, he said – and it’s the best line I’ve ever heard in my life – ‘I rather wish we’d met in different circumstances.’”

Clarkson recently teased his plans for life after Clarkson’s Farm, revealing that he wants his next project to be “unbelievably ambitious”, citing Celebrity Traitors as the kind of show he wants to make.

“I just think that television must now get bigger,” he continued. “Look at gardening shows… How are they going to survive, especially without Monty Don? You know, because anyone can do a gardening thing on social media, or cookery.

“It’s very difficult to make a television show work unless you’re cooking on the moon or doing something incredible, and that’s where I think television has to get.”