In the weeks since Rachel Reeves’s Budget and its shock attack on agricultural property relief, we’ve seen various armchair pundits pontificate on farmers’ lives – a source of mounting exasperation for farmers themselves.
The peak of pundit-on-ploughman contempt came, unsurprisingly, from LBC’s James O’Brien
First, there have been the panicky announcements from the government – that the threshold for agricultural tax relief is £1 million, or that no, actually, it’s £3 million if you’re under 5’8” and are married to a woman called Susan or…“Ooh, look over there! A bird!”’
We’ve had Owen Jones on Jeremy Vine declare that farmers were overreacting due to ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric from the media, that ‘a very small proportion of farmers overall’ would have to pay the tax (the NFU disagrees) and shifting the terrain to extreme cases of landowning like the Duke of Marlborough and Sir James Dyson. LBC’s Matthew Wright suggested that, as a majority of farmers had voted for Brexit, it was only right they should take the financial hit themselves; while on Sky News Richard Wright, Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University (and, it seems, a rather irascible fellow), seemed to glower at farming spokeswoman Victoria Vyvyan, as he spluttered to her and a young farmer that the new tax might actually be an improvement to farmers’ lives.
But the peak of pundit-on-ploughman contempt came, unsurprisingly, from LBC’s James O’Brien. Openly mocking and snickering at an agitated farmer on his show, O’Brien seemed to take lazy delight in provoking him, telling him he should sell off some of his land, until the man was left shouting: ‘I’m not your mate! I hate you! I think you’re an idiot!’ As a display of sheer urban indifference to rural woes, it was ugly stuff.
All these moments call to mind ‘Watership Alan’, the 1997 episode of I’m Alan Partridge where our Norwich-based radio-DJ, as played by Steve Coogan, manages in a few quick steps to turn Norfolk’s entire farming community against him.
It all begins with an early phone-in called ‘This morning’s farmer,’ where Partridge, complete with ‘e-i-e-i-o’ and mooing cow radio jingle, encourages local agronomists to call and share aspects of their lives (‘You were talking about cow-bringing-in,’ he says to one of them in a bored voice). But soon, clearly having read one tabloid article too many, he’s baiting them down the phonelines, accusing them of putting straitjackets on their cows, using dodgy cattle feed, and eating, for their breakfast, ‘an infected spinal column in a bap.’ A queue of farmers call the programme, all on the attack. ‘Just wanted to say your comments earlier about farmers was ignorant and offensive… You made these comments without any real knowledge about the pressures we’re under.’ Others are more colourful: ‘Have you got a brain, or are you full of sh**?’ One man calls to hiss at him – ‘Oh, you ignorant c…’ – before Partridge cuts him off just in time.
It’s a sublime episode of a classic series, enjoyable because the very idea of Partridge taking an interest in agriculture – even a cockeyed and misinformed one – is surreal. But then, there are many good things in this episode. Partridge’s confessed interest in ladyboys from Bangkok, and the porno-film he’s caught having watched on his hotel telly. The way his testicles keep wandering out of some shorts whose rubber lining has ‘perished’ – ‘The boys are back in the barracks!’ Partridge announces jauntily to assistant Lynn to sound the all-clear. Or the Norfolk Broads boating promo-video he’s called in to present when snooker player Cliff Thorburn drops out: ‘Hamilton’s Water Breaks – wa-ter-way to have a good time!’ It’s a strand of the sitcom which will slowly come together with that of the angry farmers, as a mob of them pursues him in search of vengeance.
One of the best scenes is his on-air meeting with Peter Baxendale Thomas, the local head of the Norfolk Farmers’ Union (played by Brass Eye creator Chris Morris) who demands a full apology, a conversation which quickly descends into a slanging match: ‘You’ve upset half the local farmers, you seem to alienate everybody, including your wife…Why don’t you issue a full retraction, and you’ll get yourself out of a lot of silly bother?’ Alan, in turn, denounces Baxendale-Thomas as a ‘big posh sod with plums in your mouth,’ and his whole profession with him:
‘You make pigs smoke!… You feed beefburgers to swans!… I’ve seen the big-eared boys on farms. If you see a field with a pond, with a family having a picnic, you fill in the pond with concrete, plough the family into the field, blow up the tree and use the leaves to make a dress for your wife, who’s also your brother!’
Fighting words, but not much more inflammatory than others we’ve heard this month from those in Partridge’s trade. Of course, Alan’s clash with the countrymen can’t end well and doesn’t. After following him around in a riverside pack while he tries to make his boating advert – ‘Partridge! You w***er!’ – the farmers settle on another way to get their point across. For that tiny percentage of the population who haven’t yet seen Watership Alan, there are no spoilers here about Partridge’s comeuppance, except to say that it involves physical injuries and the phrase: ‘I can feel an udder on my leg.’
Real agricultural workers in the UK have, in the past weeks, dealt with conflict a lot more equably. But a word of advice to James O’Brien, Matthew Wright and their ilk. Should anyone approach you in the near future asking if you’re free to present a waterways video, just, politely but firmly, say no to them. Then ponder the words of Alan’s opponent Peter Baxendale-Thomas: ‘Your comments were ill-founded. They were deeply ignorant, showed a lack of understanding of agricultural methods, and served to highlight the stupidity that farmers encounter from armchair pundits who forget to think before they open their mouth…’
Or you may find yourself, as Partridge puts it, treading ‘in a rather large farmer’s pat.’
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