Kaleb Cooper opens up on horror addiction that left him in hospital with 'evil headaches'

Clarkson's Farm star Kaleb Cooper has revealed how he became addicted to coffee during early starts milking the cows before being forced to undergo a Trainspotting-style detox that left him “climbing the walls”.

The young farming contractor, who has shot to fame on the Amazon Prime documentary series, sought help from doctors after suffering “evil headaches” and was sent for “loads of scans” before discovering the mystery ailment was caused by too much coffee.

“Coming off it was horrendous,” he writes in his new book, It’s a Farming Thing, which is published today. “I had to go pure cold turkey… I felt how I imagine Keith Richards must have felt, or that guy in Trainspotting.

“Okay, I didn’t see terrible things crawling on the ceiling, but that’s because I was too busy climbing the walls myself.”

These days the Chipping Norton-born star has a cup of tea in the morning or apple juice. “Normally I have tea. I don’t drink much coffee anymore because I overdid it when I was younger.” But he also admits that, although not much of a wine drinker, he loves cider.

“To quote The Wurzels, and there’s never a wrong time to quote The Wurzels, I am a cider drinker. I am so much a cider drinker I’m having to be careful to be a lot less of a cider drinker…” he writes. “It just sends me to sleep. The kind where you wake up and you don’t know what time, or day, or century it is, or who or where you are.”

Kaleb, who was brought in to assist ex-petrol-head Jeremy Clarkson in running 1,000-acre Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire, published his first memoir, The World According to Kaleb Cooper, two years ago and it became a bestseller.

The mickey-taking and bickering between Cooper, 26, and Clarkson, 64, has made their double-act a major part of the success of the hit Amazon Prime series, which has run to 24 episodes over three seasons. “The chemistry between us is obviously good,” he has said. “As soon as we're put in the same room, it just clicks. It’s just great fun when we’re together.”

Clarkson bought 1,000-acre Diddly Squat Farm near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in 2008, but only took over the running of in 2019 and has latterly turned his endeavours into three hit seasons of the Amazon Prime show.

A fourth series is due to start filming early next year. The documentary has been praised by critics for raising awareness of British farming and the challenges of modern agriculture.

Earlier this week, Clarkson revealed in a newspaper column that he had needed a life-saving operation to clear blocked arteries after falling ill on a recent holiday.

“I was at the breakfast table and when I stood up to leave, I had to take a moment to make sure my limbs were working properly,” he wrote. The ex-Top Gear presenter, who opened a refurbished pub — The Farmer’s Dog — near Burford, Oxon, this year, felt “clammy and there was a tightness in my chest”.

A doctor was called when he noticed “pins and needles” in his left arm and he was taken by ambulance to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Having been diagnosed with a blocked artery, a stent was inserted to keep it open and restore blood flow to his heart.