The World According to Kaleb - On Tour

Ah, there's the theatre.

How you doing?

"Is it a tractor?" "Yeah."

I think it's in here. Yeah.

Go on. I'll park in here. It'll be fine.

There we go. I made it!

Thank you.

Cheers. Hi. You all right?

Lovely. Yeah, just in there. Thank you.

- Kaleb? - Come in.

- We are ready for you on stage. - Oh, okay.

Um, can I bring my friend?

No! It's a one-man show. You can't bring your friends.

Good evening, Cheltenham!

Please give a huge agricultural welcome

to the farmer on tour,

all the way from Chipping Norton,

it's Kaleb Cooper!

Good evening, Cheltenham!

Now, unfortunately, they wouldn't let me bring a real tractor on stage.

So, I brought this instead.

Now, it's a whopping three horsepower and it's all made of plastic.

And you know what? It couldn't pull the skin off a good rice pudding.

But it is still better than that famous Lamborghini tractor, we all know.

I fucking hate that tractor!

This tractor even drives itself.

That's gonna take me out of a job one day. I can sense it.

Now, I get asked all the time, "Kaleb, why are you going on tour?"

And it's for one reason, and one reason alone,

is it simply put farming centre stage.

Simply put farming centre stage.

Not good at this thing.

I'm also asked, "Kaleb, are you not quite busy to be going on tour?"

And actually, come to think of it, yeah, I've got two kids now.

I've got a contracting business at home.

And we're also filming a series four of Clarkson's Farm.

Now, some would say,

I have a small obsession with tractors.

Only small... No, it's massive! I fucking love tractors.

I love them. I do everything in my tractor.

For example, I take my nan shopping on the weekend.

- Don't I, Nan? - Yes, dear.

I even take my kid to school, even though I'm not allowed to say that.

I don't do that, 'cause it's not legal.

Fuck, um...

I go down to the local pub and I have a few drinks...

And I can't say that either. Fuck!

Basically, I use my tractor for everything, okay?

Now, recently, they've changed the law

in terms of what fuel you can use in your tractor.

For example, if I take my Nan shopping on the weekend,

I have to use white diesel.

But if I go ploughing through the week,

I can use red diesel.

It's basically a tax benefit for farmers to save a little bit of money.

Now, I wanna go back a little bit.

Can everyone remember the first series of Clarkson's Farm

when I took the wasabi to London?

- Does everyone remember that? - Yes!

- Did everyone enjoy that episode? - Yes!

I'm glad you did. I had three days of counselling to sort me out after that.

Now, can everyone remember what truck I was driving?

- 0200. - 0200, yeah.

Now, I've still got that truck. But can anyone guess, um...

what fuel I was running my truck on?

White diesel, of course, 'cause that is the law. Okay?

I think my obsession with tractors started at a young age.

In fact, I bought my first-ever tractor at just age 15.

And now, I've got all these.

Fendt. New Holland.

Case.

John Deere.

And the tractor that started my business when I was just 16,

the mighty Lambo.

1998.

It's done me well.

Right. I'm gonna take you all for a ride.

Come with me.

Shit. Forgot the key.

That went well, didn't it?

I would literally forget my head if it wasn't screwed on.

And I think I speak for every farmer out there when I say,

every farmer's got that hiding place on the farm

where they hide all their keys.

Am I right?

Security is high on a farm, honestly.

And in fact, come to think of it,

every car has its own key

and you start that one car, and that's it.

But weirdly, you can go on the internet

and just buy any of these keys there,

and then, just start any of my tractors.

Security is high on a farm, trust me, all right?

So, this is a New Holland T7.210.

And, yeah, it's quite technical. It's got GPS on the roof.

Shocked it's actually still there, not been nicked yet,

because that's a proper problem in agriculture these days.

Got some sheep coming to the right of us.

Don't look 'em in the eyes. Don't look 'em in the eyes.

Here they are. They're grazing some cover crops by the looks of it.

If you look sheep in the eyes, it's just bad news.

They're probably gonna get stuck in a fence and die.

So, therefore, we won't look them in the eyes as we go past them.

Bit bumpy in here. Hope you're all sat...

sat nice and firm in your seats.

Yeah, they're looking me in the eye.

I hate sheep.

Look at them.

Fucking things.

Let's get past them quickly, shall we?

Look at it.

It wants to fight ya. I know it does.

I can sense it.

But you know what? There's no place I would rather be

than in the tractor.

It's my happy place!

Let's get this back in the shed and get back to the stage.

Now, that obsession with tractors started at a very young age.

I remember being age ten

and helping my dad on the building site.

And as I walked down... I used to be a go-for.

Does anyone know what go-for means?

"Go and get this. Go and get that." Yeah?

Been there, done that bit.

And he used to go, "Kaleb, go and get me a hammer."

So as I trotted down to the van,

we was working in a place called Hook Norton,

I remember getting to the van, and I see this tractor in the field behind

just going up and down,

up and down, all day long.

I was fascinated by tractor wheels just going around and around and...

And when they go through mud...

I mean...

You see what I mean, though? Like, it's just fascinating, right?

Now my farming career started at a very young age.

I was age 12 when I got into farming.

And at age 12, my mum and dad went through a really tricky divorce.

And I always said this to myself,

I firmly believe farming saved me as a person,

because at age 12, as my mum and dad were going through this divorce,

my mum and myself went this way,

and my brother and my dad went this way.

Therefore, it split the family in half.

And at the time, my mum just recently set up a mobile dog grooming business

where she would turn up at someone's house,

plug into their electric and groom their dog.

Great idea. Good idea, Mum.

But financials was very slow coming in,

'cause as you'd just started this business, business was very slow.

And I thought to myself, "You know what, Mum?

"I wanna be a farmer when I'm older."

And therefore, I got my first-ever job on the farm at age 12.

Now, I was working on a dairy farm, milking 120 Brown Swiss cows

with two robots, and rearing all the followers. Great fun.

Now, at age 13, my life changed a little bit more.

Because for my 13th birthday,

my mum didn't buy me an Xbox, a PlayStation, a TV.

In fact, my mum bought me three chickens.

Three chickens.

And I thought to myself at age 13, "I know. I've got an idea here.

"I can set my own company up."

So, therefore, age 13,

I started my own company.

It was called Kaleb Cooper's Happy Hen Egg Company.

A mouthful, I know, right?

Seemed a good idea at the time.

Now, business was going so good,

within two months of my 13th birthday,

I had 450 chickens.

It got busy quite quickly.

Now, I was selling the eggs locally around Chipping Norton.

I realised who my egg customer base was.

It was the older generation.

'Cause I was walking around Chipping Norton with my egg basket.

I was knocking on people's doors, asking if they want to buy a dozen eggs.

It was the older generation buying the eggs.

What I realised very early on is that,

every time I knocked on their door and said, "Would you buy a dozen eggs,"

they said, "Yes, please. Would you like to have a cup of tea?"

I go, "Well... I've got 13 dozen eggs to deliver.

"I've gotta be back at work at 4:00.

"Oh, yeah, I'll have a cup of tea."

'Cause I knew, if I had a cup of tea with these people,

I could sell them another dozen eggs.

I was really good at selling eggs.

Really good. Scary, actually. Come to think of it now,

every time I look at tea and biscuits, it makes me a bit sick.

I drank a lot of tea and ate a lot of biscuits.

But you know what? It sold a lot of eggs.

I hate this picture.

I hate it.

Because my head is not that shape!

But the perm looks fucking amazing, doesn't it?

You don't agree?

Now, at age 14, I thought, how can I keep improving my business?

I've got these 450 chickens.

I'm making good money.

And I thought, "I got an idea."

Now, I don't know why I thought this, but I did.

I bought three sheep.