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Caroline Frost: 'By sharing their most vulnerable moments, these successful, proud men are offering something profound'
Life-changing illness has forced TV’s most formidable figures to face their vulnerability – to profound effect
Amazon MGM Studios
- Caroline Frost
Add Clarkson's Farm and Jon Snow: A Last Big Story to your watchlist
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We’re long used to a Jeremy Clarkson narrative arc. Whether he’s trying to beat his fellow drivers to a Vietnamese floating bar in an amphibious vehicle, or thinking he knows better than his experienced colleague when it comes to marking lines in a barley field, the schtick remains the same. A big, ambitious plan; a load of contrived, some accidental, peril to be faced with a mixture of irritated bluster and sardonic side-eye; then, finally, by the magic of TV, inspiration pulls a solution out of a hat, and it’s off to the pub.
Off screen, we’ve seen it too. After the nature of his abrupt Top Gear exit that would’ve finished almost every presenter’s career, he parlayed his popularity into the Amazon behemoth of The Grand Tour, before he took his own rural life and put it on screen for Clarkson’s Farm. With a bucolic idyll, a glamorous girlfriend, loyal dogs, he appeared to be winning at life, out of trouble and into his own Cotswolds vegetable patch, Peter Rabbit in reverse.
Until last month, when his tractors made a grinding gear change and he told his colleagues Kaleb and Charlie on camera: “I’ve got cancer.” The looks on their faces no doubt mirrored those of fans watching: how could this man be facing the same challenge as so many of us mortals?
Jon Snow. Channel 4
But the truth is life, death and other brutal realities have always been at the heart of Clarkson’s Farm. His unstoppable force of a persona, large and inviolable has, since the show’s debut, come up comedically against the immoveable forces of Defra legislation and his own lack of expertise. More seriously, he has mourned the loss of livestock, wept over newborn piglets and drunk to the recovering health of his wall-builder Gerald. And presiding over every event is that great British humbler, the weather, able to determine his success or failure on a whim.
His news comes soon after Jon Snow’s documentary about his experience of Alzheimer’s, a story that took a turn with Snow chancing upon an environmental disaster while holidaying in Zambia, and putting his investigative instincts back into play. The result: a moving contrast of his still towering professional abilities against his new limitations.
Snow and Clarkson’s faces have been on our screens, their voices in our heads, for 40 years or more; they are more familiar than visiting uncles.
They are inviting us to share a new chapter, one where it’s OK to age, to ail
Where Snow is elegant, Clarkson ebullient, both have brands built on a very British kind of masculinity – a sceptical, take-it-all-in-their-stride version relying on strength of intellect and wit of speech. Jeremy Paxman had similar gifts – now he and his chums share their thoughts on living with Parkinson’s in the hit podcast Movers and Shakers.
You could say that these men enjoy access to the best treatment, that they are seasoned broadcasters with no situation they can’t turn into good copy and, besides, what else are they going to do?
But how they have all been received speaks for itself. Paxman’s podcast has been downloaded more than two million times. The Alzheimer’s Society reported a huge search for a symptom checklist following Snow’s documentary. Clarkson, now in remission, told his 11 million Instagram followers: “I’m perfectly fine… because I got tested. Thousands die every year. Don’t be one of them.”
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But, besides such quantifiable benefits, by sharing their most vulnerable moments, these successful, proud men are offering something profound. They are inviting us to share a new chapter, one where it’s OK to age, to ail, to wish simply for another plentiful harvest. I wish them well.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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