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If you're enjoying Clarkson's Farm 4, do your bit to make our agricultural heroes (and Charlie), a little more cheerful. SHOP LOCALLY. This takes zero effort. The UK has THOUSANDS of farm shops, and ample independent butchers, bakers and fishmongers, too. Stop saying "it's more expensive" because it isn't. You can't even walk into Aldi without £100 evaporating from your wallet. My farm shop sells the *best* bell peppers, and they cost 45p each. Local produce is delicious, seasonal, ethical, sustainable, reasonably priced (especially in the wake of INSANE fertiliser/feed prices), and vital to our economy, so stop being tight. THANK THEM FOR THEIR SERVICE. Our farmers are as important as all our other servicemen and women, but nobody gives a damn about them. They work day and night, all year round, in all weathers, to feed our nation, honour the most exacting animal welfare standards, drive our economy forward, and preserve our beautiful countryside. If you're out on a walk and see a local farmer, give them a wave, or say hello or thanks. You might just make their day. WALK YOUR DOG WITH SENSE. Did you know a farmer can legally shoot your dog if it threatens or terrifies livestock? Yup, they cannot cull a badger or a fox, but they can kill your beloved Terrier. Save farmers a boatload of hassle, and your family a boatload of misery, by being sensible. If you're out walking your dog on agricultural land, keep it on a lead at all times. IGNORE THE ANTI-FARMING NONSENSE YOU SEE ONLINE. The UK has some of the most stringent measures placed on farmers in practically every area of land and livestock ownership. Yet they have to deal with uneducated idiots going into supermarkets and pouring milk all over the floor because they think milking a dairy cow is mean. Even though, if you don't milk a dairy cow, she will die an excruciating death. Farming in this country and Europe is nothing like those ludicrous images you see of battery-farmed chickens in the US. STAND ALONGSIDE THEM. Clarkson's Farm shows just some of the red tape BS farmers have to deal with. Now imagine being a farmer who isn't Jeremy Clarkson and doesn't have a £58 million net worth. One who can't just suddenly decide to open a pub that people will immediately flock to. Right now, as part of the Government's Levelling Up scheme, they are pushing British farmers to give up vast parts of their land as flood defence against all the new houses being built. But get this; they expect farmers to give it up without a robust compensation scheme. So they lose land, and annual profits, in exchange for diddly squat (pun intended). This is just one example, but it shows the magnitude our farmers face to do their jobs sustainably and fairly. We must stand alongside them. So yes, do these things and give our agricultural workers more reasons to be cheerful. Note: I originally posted this last year. I've just made some updates. #clarksonsfarm #farming

Today marks my last day before a *whole* month off. It'll be the longest amount of time away I've had since graduating university 14 years ago... I know, I don't look a day over 21. I'm so grateful that Finally Agency offers such a kind and generous policy that rewards long-serving team members with a sabbatical holiday. Being away for that amount of time is both incredibly exciting and a little scary, but I am making the most of my time with a chock-o-block calendar, and I'm truly relishing this rare chance to do all the things. My first stop is the Corfu sunshine, but before that, I need to do some serious garden prep to ensure my flowers don't all peg it while I'm away. #creative #holiday

Jeremy Clarkson is bucking one of the most frustrating trends: the mediocre celebrity-endorsed product. We're old and ugly enough to know that most celebrity-backed and/or branded products and services are usually overpriced, half-baked, and not a scratch on their counterparts. Clarkson is one such celebrity who is not falling foul of this age-old trap. He already proved his stripes with Hawkstone Lager when it was released a few years ago. People initially had doubts, but it proved to be a delicious, high-quality beer, produced with British Spring Barley from Diddly Squat Farm. The successive releases in the Hawkstone line-up (especially the IPAs) have been of equally high standard. But yesterday, after driving hundreds of miles across Shropshire, I put him to the real test by stopping off in the Cotswolds for a roast dinner at his Burford pub, The Farmer's Dog. Everything the pub sells and serves is 100% British, and this mantra is carried out to the finest of details - to the point where you can't even order Coca-Cola, French wine, or even a coffee. That means everything you eat or drink has been sourced from the UK, and the lion's share is directly from the Cotswolds. The food was fantastic. Plentiful, local, and fairly priced. My bill for two beef roast dinners with all the trimmings, a side of honey and mustard chipolatas, a pint of Hawkstone Bounder, and a large glass of Chapel Down rosé was £67, including a 12.5% service charge. A pint of any Hawkstone lager or cider is also cheaper here than the standard crap at your local. The service was rapid. I've never seen a busier pub in all my life, and I was worried we'd be in for a long wait ahead of a long drive home, but we were seated early, and eating our food before our original booking time. The staff were very polite and attentive. The location was splendid. The pub itself is gorgeous, and restored to an exceptional standard, but its outside space is a joke. There's at least an acre of garden, with completely unspoilt views of the Cotswolds from all directions. That outside space is as well thought-out as the inside. It features three additional bars (two outside taprooms, and one inside a large tent), multiple eatery options if you don't have a pub reservation, a well-stocked farm shop, outdoor games for families, additional toilets and parking, facilities for dogs, and what feels like miles of seating. When we left, my resounding thought was that everyone involved in making and manning The Farmer's Dog knows it directly reflects Jeremy Clarkson. And whether you like him or not, what he has done for British farming is arguably more significant than any government or the NFU combined. If the pub's standards are poor, the prices wild, or the experience sucks, that directly impacts the credibility of his brand, and it's a brand that British farming absolutely relies on. I can attest that The Farmer's Dog is fabulous, and I'll be returning very soon. #brand

I saw Björk's concert film, Cornucopia, last night, and I have thoughts. As an exercise in pure, unwavering creativity, it was nothing short of astonishing. #creative

It is nearly impossible to quantify the amount of work and effort that goes into the show gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show every year. Show garden designers and planners can spend a year or more preparing for the show—drawing, framing, working within their allocated space, and testing and selecting to find the right plants and materials. Then, they get just three weeks to build the most brilliant and intricate garden of their lives before the doors open, and once the doors close, they have to dismantle everything in just five days. During the show, they must ensure every element of their garden looks constantly PRISTINE. That means fighting the weather, crowds, foot traffic, TV cameras, birds, and insects. It also means constantly deadheading spent blooms, removing damaged leaves, and ensuring an ample water supply, shade, shelter, or all of the above, depending on what the elements decide to do. It's like spending months upon months upon months working on your most important and precious painting, but that painting happens to be alive, and it also happens that everything is systematically trying to kill or spoil it. Creating a show garden at Chelsea is little more than absolute flipping madness. And yet, it's one of the best and longest-standing demonstrations of true, tactile creativity we have left. In this AI age, where instant gratification and results come cheaper than Shein, we need creative tasks that demand perseverance. Creative tasks that test and challenge us. The creative projects that let us sink our teeth and hearts into them. #creative

In an age when people already have anxieties about having genuine conversations with others, why are companies like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat still offering a "Leave at Door" service? It just perpetuates the problem. #creative

If you're good at The 1% Club, you can improve your marketing output. Nearly all of The 1% Club's questions are based on recognising patterns, or applying common sense, not IQ - two of the most critical skills in marketing. Marketing, at its very core, is psychology. It's identifying how people think, studying behaviour patterns, and then tailoring information to target both. If you can get your head around the more challenging questions on Lee Mack's popular game show, start applying that thinking to your marketing. It's a far better lens to look through than what's pretty or what's trending. #creative

While scrolling through the late, great, Roy Grace's website, a thought struck me harder than a surprise stage slap from Will Smith. We have become obsessed with making advertising not look like advertising. The incessant need for marketing to slot seamlessly into an organic approach or look, in a bid to essentially fool customers into thinking "it's just content", means we're denying the world of genuinely brilliant, properly creative advertising. I mean, just look at this collection of Range Rover/Land Rover ads from 1987 onwards. Grace & Rothschild were commissioned by Range Rover/Land Rover to help them launch into the US market. The campaign ran for years, and won awards almost every year in the process, and it's easy to see why. It's "proper" advertising. The kinds of lines, images, and positions that immediately take you from your seat, and place you at the heart of the story. Every single one (and this is just a handful of them) is as brilliantly conceived and realised as the last. Intelligent, funny, memorable. I've long been a lover of Harley-Davidson, which I think is one of the few brands that still makes "proper" advertising. I think the likelihood that they have been influenced by Grace and Co.'s work is extremely high. #brand #creative

The BrewDog Punk IPA rebrand gives the same impression as Kim Kardashian in a Metallica t-shirt. Inauthentic. For a beer that BrewDog themselves say "kick-started the craft beer revolution", Punk IPA's new design fails to give the impression of a leader. In fact, I'd say it just looks cliché. The typeface is the worst offender. It might have been edgy when the Sex Pistols did it fifty years ago, but not today. Now it just looks like a Canva font. I think, in our current age of "reblands", BrewDog had a real opportunity here to come back swinging - especially with their first brainchild. Instead, they've served up a caseload of forgettable. #brand #creative

Why have Sir Keir Starmer's PR team made him sound like Phil Daniels going on a package holiday with On The Beach? "You know how it goes: all you want to do is get your Wetherspoon's pint, your duty-free cigs, and get on the bleeding plane; not having to deal with those muppets at passport control". In fairness, this is a MASSIVE win for the UK, especially for someone like me who travels a great deal, but this post reeks of a PR team desperate to try and make the Prime Minister seem more like an everyman. He sounds nothing like this whatsoever, and that's absolutely okay. Don't try to paint his digital image in shades that his physical image cannot or will not wear. #brand

Yeah, AI image generation is good and all that, but it's still not good enough to follow the very simple instruction of producing a photorealistic image of Slipknot riding unicycles down a charming Cotswolds village lane laced with thatched cottages, while wearing three-piece suits and tipping their top hats. This is the best I got after several attempts and prompt changes. The arm-to-tipped-hat ratio is waaaaay off. Happy Wednesday. #creative