The final two episodes of Clarkson's Farm Season 5, released on Prime Video in the middle of the night on Tuesday, contain the news that Jeremy Clarkson, 66, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He has known since May. He found out during a routine medical, had a biopsy, and carried on filming. In episode seven of the series, sitting around a table with farm manager Kaleb Cooper and land agent Charlie Ireland, he let them know that the July harvest they were planning around was not going to work for him.
"I've got cancer."
Cooper, visibly stunned, asked where. Clarkson told him that was nobody's business. He described it as aggressive but said it had been caught really early. He said he had an operation ahead of him and that his body would be out of action for a little while afterwards. Cooper asked when they would know if the treatment had worked. Clarkson said probably not for several weeks.
By the end of the season, he was back in a hospital bed, having experienced complications. He addressed the camera directly. He said the season had started with him in a hospital bed and had ended the same way. Then he said: "What I wanted to say was if this is all successful, I'll see you for season six, and if it isn't, I won't. Take care, everyone."
He warned viewers in advance. On Instagram, just before the episodes dropped, he described the final two as a difficult watch. That was, by any measure, an understatement.
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Prostate cancer caught at an early stage carries a survival rate of around 98 per cent at five years according to multiple cancer research bodies. That statistic is the reason those close to Clarkson, and the medical team treating him, will have told him not to panic. Early detection genuinely changes the outcome. The NHS has recently begun expanding its screening programme to men most at risk for exactly this reason.
Clarkson arrived at this diagnosis having already dealt with two blocked coronary arteries in 2024, requiring two stents fitted after he collapsed while on holiday. He began Season 5 of Clarkson's Farm in a hospital setting for that reason. The man has had an extraordinarily difficult 18 months healthwise, and has chosen, characteristically, to document it publicly rather than retreat.
There is nobody like him in British television and the gap he would leave is genuinely unfillable. He made Top Gear what it became over 22 years alongside Richard Hammond and James May, a show that was notionally about cars but was actually about friendship, stupidity, adventure and the specific comedy of three men who should know better attempting things they definitely should not. He took that energy to The Grand Tour and then, with declining health and advancing years, to a farm in the Cotswolds where he became, against all expectation, the most effective advocate for British farmers the country has produced. The inheritance tax protests. The bovine TB crisis. The planning regulations that nearly closed Diddly Squat. He turned all of it into television, which made people understand it in a way a press release or a protest could not.
He also, in his columns for The Sunday Times and The Times, remained one of the most widely read writers in Britain, which is a different skill set entirely from being a television presenter and one he has never been sufficiently credited for. He is funny in print in a way that requires genuine craft.
We wish him well. We wish him a full recovery. We wish him Season 6.
Sources
- Variety — 'Top Gear' Star Jeremy Clarkson Reveals 'Aggressive' Cancer Diagnosis
- ITV News — Jeremy Clarkson reveals 'aggressive' prostate cancer diagnosis
- Deadline — Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson Diagnosed With 'Aggressive' Cancer: 'It's Really Early'
- LBC — What type of cancer does Jeremy Clarkson have, is he having treatment?
- LADbible — Jeremy Clarkson reveals he has been diagnosed with cancer
- Hollywood Life — Jeremy Clarkson's Prostate Cancer Battle: Health Updates