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Jeremy Clarkson has claimed he told a member of JD Vance’s security team to “f*** off” during the US vice president’s visit to the Cotswolds.
Vance, who has been spending his family holiday in a Grade II listed country manor in the hamlet of Dean, was met by protesters during his visit this week, who gathered in the village for a “not welcome” party, equipped with banners, cake and pictures of an unflattering meme of the vice president.
Clarkson, 65, who is based in the Cotswolds and films his Prime Video show Clarkson’s Farm there, has written about Vance’s visit in his recent column for The Sunday Times.
He wrote that there was a “kilometre-wide no fly zone round the house” where Vance was staying, which was “slightly annoying” for him because “we use drones to film my farm show”.
The former Top Gear presenter continued: “But it was quickly dealt with thanks to a conversation which went something like this. Security man: ‘Is that your drone?’ Me: ‘Yes.’ Security man: ‘You aren’t allowed to fly that today.’ Me: ‘F*** off.’ Security man: ‘OK.’”
Clarkson added that his farm hand, Kaleb Cooper, also had an encounter with Vance’s security. “We certainly knew it when Vance landed,” he wrote. “He arrived in a cavalcade of 27 massive black American SUVs and this was escorted by a shoal of British police remoras on motorcycles whose job was to shoo everyone out of the way.
“One of the people who they ordered to pull over was Kaleb Cooper, my tractor driver, but it was starting to rain and he urgently needed to get his load of wheat into the shed, so he invited his tormentor to eff off. And carried on regardless.”
Clarkson had a tense encounter with Vance’s security (Getty)
Earlier this month, Clarkson admitted that funds amassed from his hit TV show Clarkson’s Farm are keeping his Diddly Squat farm alive, after a “disastrous” harvest.
The 1,000-acre holding in Oxfordshire is at the heart of his hugely popular Prime Video series, which follows the presenter’s journey as a new farmer and the challenges he faces along the way.
He wrote on X/Twitter on Friday 8 August: “It looks like this year’s harvest will be catastrophic. That should be a worry for anyone who eats food.
“If a disaster on this scale had befallen any other industry, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.”