Charlie Ireland, the unassuming star of Clarkson’s Farm, has revealed the secret heartache his family suffered after his father was killed by motor neurone disease.
Digesting his life as an accidental celebrity, he also looked back on his fundraising work, his campaign against Labour’s farming tax grab, and his social media lessons from fellow star Kaleb.
‘Cheerful Charlie’, as he is ironically and affectionately known, was Jeremy Clarkson’s agronomist – meaning advisor on all things farming – long before the Clarkson’s Farm series was conceived.
He has won fans with his earnest charm, and is one of the key characters alongside Clarkson, his girlfriend Lisa, farm hand Kaleb Cooper, and countryside caricature Gerald Cooper.
He is a stickler for the rules and a brilliant tonic to Clarkson’s rollicking enthusiasm – tempering his mad plans with a dose of sober realism – though insists he is quite cheerful in real life.
Charlie, these days living in Oxfordshire, never sought the spotlight, but now finds himself being regularly stopped for selfies.
He uses his unexpected fame as a ‘platform’ to raise awareness of issues that are important to him. This year, one of those was the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA).
MND was forced upon Charlie when it claimed the life of his beloved father, Christopher, who died at just 67 in 2011.
Charlie Ireland, Jeremy Clarkson’s agronomist on Clarkson’s Farm, has revealed the secret heartache his family faced after his father died with motor neurone disease
Charlie has been Clarkson’s agricultural advisor since 2009 – well before the show was conceived
All this came after he survived brain tumours in his younger years.
Speaking to The Telegraph at his home, Charlie said: ‘Christopher – Chris – was just the most wonderful individual I had the pleasure to meet.’
Chris was born into a traditional farming family in Lincolnshire.
He ran an arable farm alongside his brother and three uncles, where they grew malt, barley and sugar beet.
Charlie is the middle of three children – with an older brother, Jon, who is still farming, and a younger sister, Becks, who works with horses.
The family’s first sign of something wrong came at a wedding in September 2007.
Chris left the dance floor complaining that his foot felt strange, and it had gone slightly floppy.
By the Christmas of that year, the family decided to consult a specialist, believing Charlie could have a back problem.
With his mother stricken by flu, Charlie took his father to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham himself – where a conversation unfolded that would change both of their lives.
There, a consultant broke the news that Chris probably had MND.
MND is a cruel degenerative condition where the nerve cells in the brain that control muscle movement slowly break down.
Without signals from the brain, the muscles waste away.
The patient is robbed of the ability to walk, talk, swallow and, eventually, breathe.
Charlie lives in Oxfordshire and often travels to Clarkson’s farm to give the Top Gear star a dose of sober realism
Kaleb Cooper and Charlie outside 10 Downing Street to meet then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
The mind is often unaffected, meaning sufferers will appreciate the full horror of their decline.
Around 5,000 people in the UK live with MND at any one time, with just over a thousand new diagnoses each year.
MNDA, founded in 1979, raises money to fund care and research for people with the disease – for which there is currently no cure.
The Lincolnshire branch of the charity helped the family as Chris lost the use of his feet, arms and legs, eventually become reliant on a wheelchair.
Helpers were sent to the house to provide respite care, and the charity was there for emotional support.
Charlie said of the organisation: ‘It makes what is a horrendous period as bearable as it can be, to the point where sometimes you can get on and enjoy life.’
Chris’s mind remained in tact, meaning his good humour and personality remained throughout.
But no matter how positive one’s outlook, MND will always bring dark moments.
Charlie recalled that, as his body declined, Chris began to sometimes raise his voice, which he never used to do.
Maddening sleep deprivation was another painful challenge brought on by the disease.
Clarkson’s Farm has proven wildly popular, often topping streaming leaderboards around the world
Series five of Clarkson’s Farm is due to air in the spring, with more likely on the horizon
‘You do your bit, but it’s quite hard work, which is the understatement of the year. It’s brutal. But the bravery of the individuals going through it stands out. Because they know it’s coming,’ Charlie said.
Chris died on February 26, 2011, after meeting his first two grandchildren.
Charlie first encountered the charity MNDA when he ran in the Rob Burrow Leeds marathon, founded by rugby star Rob Burrow who died of the disease the following year.
Kaleb Cooper taught him how to open an Instagram account so that he could raise money for the cause.
His profile is still called @runcheerulcharlie and has amassed almost 250,000 followers.
As a young man, Charlie studied biological science in Nottingham, travelled to work in Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and finally settled into the family farm business.
But he later swapped the fields for the office and took up a desk job as an agronomist, where he advises farmers on every aspect of their businesses.
He started working with Clarkson in 2009, soon after he bought the farm.
Jeremy and the producers of Clarkson’s farm approached Charlie with the idea of the show in 2019 – two weeks before filming began – and asked if he would feature in it.
The series first aired in 2021, and that same year Charlie launched a farming consultancy, Ceres Rural, alongside seven partners. Today there are 28.
As one of the industry’s most famous faces, Charlie has become an unofficial spokesperson for farming, which has seen a surge in popularity on the back of the show.
It is in this capacity that he took up the fight against Labour’s tax regime.
He authored a piece in The Times headlined ‘Labour’s tax raid is the worst crisis I’ve seem in farming’.
Under furious pressure from farmers with protests in Whitehall, Rachel Reeves eventually U-turned on her controversial policy.
Series five of Clarkson’s Farm is due to air in the spring.
With the show continuing to top streaming leaderboards around the world, there looks to be plenty more in store from Clarkson, Lisa, Charlie, Kaleb and Gerald.
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