Sara Cox is busy. She has barely finished going Back in Time For Tea, now she is helping lonely farmers find love. As well as her Radio 2 stuff. I don’t mind, there’s no such thing as too much Sara Cox.
So eight farmers uploaded video profiles, and prospective partners were invited to write them letters. Letters! What is this, the past? Do they not have Tinder and Grindr in the countryside?
Whatever, Sara delivers them their letters from which they have to whittle down a shortlist. Thirty-two-year-old Christine (sheep and cattle, Dumfries and Galloway, took over the farm when her dad died, runs it by herself) doesn’t have much whittling to do, there aren’t many letters in her box … Oh God, already I can’t bear this. She’s lovely, what’s wrong with you idiots?
Ed (dairy, Lancashire) has loads of letters, he needs an extra box. That’s because Ed’s 25, gorgeous, charming, attentive, has perfect teeth … yawn. Likewise Heather (vet, North Yorkshire) – 28, tall, blond, horsey, she’ll be fighting them off.
Peter (52, also North Yorks) is good news, though. I mean from a TV perspective rather than to move in with. Divorcee (can’t imagine what went wrong) Peter is what you want in a farmer on a show like this. Mucky hands, old-fashioned shirt and matching views. “Cows are probably better behaved than women, aren’t they?” he says.
Peter soon finds a letter from someone he likes the sound of – well, the look of first, it’s the photo that catches his attention. “Ay up, this is a right corker this,” he says. “An absolute cracker!”
I wonder what he sees in Francesca, who is 16 years younger than he is and who writes that she was immediately attracted to his round masculine features, then apologises that her perfumed, kiss-sealed letter is a bit crumpled but she was dripping wet, fresh from the shower when she wrote it.
The others roll their eyes. Back at home, Peter’s family roll theirs. “She looks maybe a little bit too glamorous. I don’t think she’s maybe the country sort,” says Peter’s nephew. His two teenage sons like the look of Christina, who isn’t just attractive, and of a similar age to their dad, but she also worked on a dairy farm for several years. It’s almost as if they suspect Francesca’s motives might have more to do with a primetime TV appearance than actually looking for a new rural life – and love – on the farm. Guess what? Francesca goes on the definite pile – as she was always going to the moment Peter saw her – and it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.
There’s an interview process – not the most successful part of this; it’s awkward and old school. There’s something of Blind Date about it, with our farmers asking the same questions to their prospective partners in order to whittle down further. “What are you looking for in a relationship?” Peter asks each potential Mrs Peter. (The best answer is “a man”, from a Geordie lorry driver named Mo). It has none of the natural, date-reality of Channel 4’s First Dates.
Coxy does her best to keep it moving along, with bants and a lot of alliteration. And I imagine most of the fun is yet to come, when our potential farmers’ partners go back to the farm, to get up at dawn in order to shovel cowpats, and to pretend to get on with their rivals while obviously really wanting to kill them. Plenty of opportunity for that too. There’s a lot of heavy machinery around, things to be shredded or baled and slurry tanks to drown in, bulls …
Decision time for Peter. Oh, Christina – his sons’ favourite, with cow experience – doesn’t make the final cut. Nor Mo. Francesca? She does, as it happens. More eye-rolling. And possibly a little thumbs up, under the table, from the programme-makers. Get them wellies on, girl. Something to look forward to next week.
I’m also looking forward to finding out how 39-year-old Richard, who is looking for a man, gets on. The gay scene in the Scottish sheep-farming community isn’t brilliant, apparently. And then there’s 52-year-old Norfolk farrier Mark. “One thing I haven’t told anybody yet, is I ain’t got any central heating,” he chuckles. How are you going to resist that ladies, an icy east wind blowing through your Norfolk farmhouse? Now I expect Mark will need an extra box, for all his letters. And will end up with a 27-year-old model called Anastasia. Ooh arrr.
