Audiobook Review: Diddly Squat by Jeremy Clarkson

Diddly Squat: A Year on the Farm
by Jeremy Clarkson

Publication date: November 11th 2021
Publisher: Penguin Audio

Summary:

Welcome to Jeremy’s farm. It’s an idyllic spot, offering picturesque views across the Cotswolds, bustling hedgerows, woodlands and natural springs. Jeremy always liked the idea of being a farmer. But, while he was barrelling around the world having more fun with cars than was entirely reasonable, it seemed obvious that the actual, you know, farming was much better left to someone else.

Then one day he decided he would do the farming himself.

After all, how hard could it be?

Well…

Faced with suffocating red tape, biblical weather, local objections, a global pandemic and his own frankly staggering ignorance of how to ‘do farming’, Jeremy soon realises that turning the farm around is going to take more than splashing out on a massive tractor.

Fortunately, there’s help at hand from a large and (mostly) willing team, including girlfriend Lisa, Kaleb the tractor driver, cheerful Charlie, Ellen the shepherd and Gerald, his head of security and dry stone waller. Between them they enthusiastically cultivate crops, rear livestock and hens, keep bees, bottle spring water and open a farm shop. But profits remain elusive.

And yet, while the farm may be called Diddly Squat for good reason, Jeremy soon begins to understand that it’s worth a whole lot more to him than pounds, shillings and pence….

Source: Goodreads

Thoughts:

“Diddly Squat” is a collection of Jeremy Clarkson‘s newspaper columns written and published during the 2020 pandemic when he decided to dip his toe into farming, as you do. If you’ve already read those, I’d say you’d probably want to give this one a miss.

For those who haven’t already read the columns, this is an easy, undemanding, yet witty read that, somewhat surprisingly, is actually factually important and meaningful, highlighting the difficulties of farming in the UK.

This is super quick read, so my review is too. In general this was a really enjoyable read that put a smile on my face for a couple of hours. There were some snarky comments here and there that I didn’t like, but that’s also on me as I knew that there would be from what I know of the author.

I haven’t watched the immensely popular TV series but this was fun and I think now I might give it a go!

Overall rating: ‘Diddly Squat’ by Jeremy Clarkson is a quick witty read, a collection of newspaper columns written by the author on his adventures on farming life. I enjoyed this, a nice 4 star read!

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