A FARMER has said he was \u201cblown away\u201d when his choir received a \u201cgolden buzzer\u201d and was\u00a0sent to the semi-finals of Britain\u2019s Got Talent.<\/p>\n
Ted Howard-Jones, 62, who farms at Cholsey and is secretary of the Nettlebed Farming Club, was one of the 40 farmers performing as the Hawkstone Farmers\u2019 Choir, which was created by Jeremy Clarkson as part of an advertising campaign for his brewing firm.<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones was selected a year ago out of 500 farmers who auditioned.<\/p>\n
The choir stuck together after enjoying the initial performance and, last October, was invited by the ITV talent show to its auditions at the Birmingham Hippodrome.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe thought, \u2018This is going well, we\u2019re really enjoying this, we can\u2019t just do this for one day\u2019. We wanted to do more and Clarkson agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think any farmer is expecting to be on Britain\u2019s Got Talent, so we really didn\u2019t know what to expect. We were amazed to be there in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the episode, which aired on Saturday night, judge Amanda Holden gave the group the \u201cgolden buzzer\u201d in response to their performance of Elbow\u2019s One Day Like This.<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones said the reaction to the performance, which also received a standing ovation from those in the live audience, has been \u201cstaggering\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe were absolutely blown away that we even got one judge thinking we were doing the right thing, let alone the golden buzzer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reaction since then has been staggering. I can\u2019t believe how many thousands of people have liked what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been amazing over the last couple of days everyone in the choir said their phones have melted basically.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been very, very positive and it\u2019s heartening to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones said organising rehearsals for the choir was like \u201cherding cats\u201d as members are spread out over the country. He said: \u201cWe have done very little singing together because we\u2019re from all over the place and it\u2019s darn difficult to get us all together.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learnt a song, did two days of rehearsal, we have done very little singing together because we\u2019re from all over the place and it\u2019s darn difficult to get us all together.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are sent out pieces to learn independently and then when we get together, we have all done our rehearsals.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of us can sing and most of us can read music and at least follow a cue, some have a lot of experience some haven\u2019t and literally just trying to organise our next rehearsal, which is a bit like herding cats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones said the choir was now deciding what songs they would perform at the semi-finals, for which a date is yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n
The choir, which has used its platform to shine a light on mental health issues increasingly impacting farmers, has committed to donating prize money to a farming charity if it wins the competition.<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones said: \u201cMental health in farming is really important, and I know people who have really suffered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have known people in farming who have committed suicide, so it is very high on my agenda and many of the others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very lonely issue because there are loads working on their own on farms these days, it\u2019s not like the old days where even my small farm in the Chilterns probably would have had five guys working on it, but it\u2019s just me now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very different environment now and the pressures are quite high.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the choir has provided the farmers a community which is \u201clike a family\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got the most active WhatsApp group you\u2019ve ever seen and we\u2019re all in it together and people are posting stuff about what they\u2019re doing from their lemming sheds or whoever has had an accident that day and it feels like another family and its amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Howard-Jones said the choir had received many enquiries since the performance aired about bookings and hoped it could stay together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A FARMER has said he was \u201cblown away\u201d when his choir received a \u201cgolden buzzer\u201d and was\u00a0sent to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,1692],"class_list":{"0":"post-2686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-farming"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}