Five series in, and Clarkson's Farm still has the power to reduce grown adults — Jeremy Clarkson included — to tears. The former Top Gear host, 66, broke down in one of the most emotional scenes the Amazon Prime Video show has ever produced, as he was forced to say goodbye to his beloved pigs at Diddly Squat Farm in the Cotswolds.
Episode four of the fifth series, which dropped on Wednesday 3 June, saw Clarkson faced with a gut-wrenching business decision: get rid of his Oxford Sandy and Black pigs, or keep losing money. In the end, the numbers won — but his heart clearly didn't want to follow.
"I love the pigs. I've just been delighted with every day I'm down there, they make my heart sing I'm so happy with them — but we're running a business here and they make no financial sense at all."
Why the Pigs Had to Go
Clarkson had first brought his rare Oxford Sandy and Black pigs to Diddly Squat back in early 2023, and they quickly became fan favourites. But when the time came to send them to the abattoir, his butcher delivered a devastating verdict: the breed carries so much fat around the meat that it can only be used for sausages. For a farm already fighting to stay afloat, that simply wasn't viable.
With most of the herd sent to the slaughterhouse, Clarkson's distress was plain to see. As the lorry pulled away, he covered his face with both hands and wept, with his girlfriend Lisa Hogan stepping in to hold him and remind him he had given them a good life. His parting words to one of the pigs — a quiet, barely audible "Good girl" — had viewers reaching for the tissues.
"It's still f***ing sad," he tearfully told farm manager Kaleb Cooper.
A Small Mercy for Clumsy and Swizz
Not every pig met the same fate, however. Clarkson's two original breeding sows, Clumsy and Swizz — who between them had produced four batches of piglets — were spared the slaughterhouse and rehomed at a child-friendly educational farm instead.
"The one bit of good news in this whole sad saga is that these two had at least been saved from the slaughterhouse," Clarkson told Hogan. "They're going off to a farm that's like a school so children go, 'These are pigs.' I couldn't really have handled it if they'd gone off to be eaten."
The episode closed with a tender montage of the pigs' time at Diddly Squat, set to Yusuf's (formerly Cat Stevens) timeless track Father and Son — a musical choice that left many viewers completely undone.
Fans Are Heartbroken — and They Have Questions
Social media was flooded with reaction after the episode aired. "Watching Jeremy Clarkson cry over his pigs broke me down," wrote one viewer on X. "The pigs made me cry," agreed another.
But amid the sadness, a burning question has emerged among the show's most devoted fans: what happened to Richard Ham? Named after Clarkson's former Top Gear co-star Richard Hammond, the particularly small Oxford Sandy and Black was a breakout character in series four, with Clarkson overruling Kaleb's objections to keep him as something of a pet. His conspicuous absence from the farewell scenes has left Reddit threads buzzing.
"I was surprised not to see him at all, nor any mention of him. He was such a cute little guy," wrote one fan. Another posted on X: "Loving season 5 of Clarkson's Farm but Jeremy Clarkson… what happened to Richard Ham?" So far, there has been no answer.
A Series Full of Drama
The pig farewell is far from the only gut-punch series five has delivered. Earlier episodes showed Clarkson being rushed to hospital for emergency heart surgery after experiencing chest tightness, clamminess and pins and needles in his left arm. A stent was fitted to open a blocked artery, with Clarkson later revealing he had been days from death. The farm has also been dealing with an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis among its cattle herd — a crisis that left everyone at Diddly Squat, in Clarkson's own words, absolutely devastated.
New episodes of Clarkson's Farm series five drop every Wednesday on Amazon Prime Video.
