Clarkson’s Farm fans have grown to love seeing Jeremy Clarkson’s partner Lisa Hogan on the show, but before he settled down with his current partner, the presenter’s love life was far more complicated
Top Gear legend Jeremy Clarkson endured a tumultuous love life before settling down with his current partner.
The 65-year-old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire presenter may have been dating actress and model Lisa Hogan, 51, for the last eight years, but he has previously been married twice and has three grown up children.
Jeremy currently lives with his partner Lisa, who often appears with him on TV show Clarkson’s Farm set at his famous Diddly Squat farm. They met in 2017 through a mutual friend at a party.
The presenter recently shared the secret to his ‘happy’ relationship with Lisa, and it’s all about going their ‘separate ways’.
“I think it’s a happy way to live, to have breakfast together, go our separate ways, and then you’ve got plenty to talk about in the evening,” he told The Telegraph. “You can go out for dinner and you don’t sit like normal old people, not talking to each other.”
But his love life hasn’t always been a smooth ride. Jeremy married Alex Hall in 1989, but she left him for his friend two years later. After just four months, she told the Telegraph she realised she had made a big mistake.
In 2011, she said: “I can’t go into that because I have to think of my children and other people, but leaving Jeremy was the biggest mistake of my life. I still love him – I always have – but I believed that if you make your bed you’ve got to lie in it.”
In May 1993, Clarkson married his manager, Frances Cain and they became parents to Emily, Finlo, and Katya. However, in 1999, Alex claimed she and the TV star embarked on a 10-year affair. “It didn’t feel wrong because he was my ex-husband,” she said. Clarkson strongly denied the claims and initially sought an injunction, accusing Alex of blackmailing him for £300,000 – which she denied.
He hit Alex with a High Court injunction at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. But in a peculiar development, he later applied for the order to be lifted – saying he bitterly regretted it before blasting: “Injunctions are a complete nonsense.”
Clarkson said at the time: “I overturned my own injunction because injunctions don’t work. If you take out an injunction there is the automatic assumption that you must be hiding something. Bear in mind my wife and I took out this injunction – it wasn’t just me.
“But we basically realised, with Twitter and Facebook, you aren’t really able to defend yourself any more. Now there’s been this change – not really in the law but more the interpretation of it – you can no longer get an injunction and just sit on it; now the court forces you to go to trial which is massively expensive. And even if I win it all goes on Twitter and Facebook and once again I can’t do anything. But if I lose, I’ve got to pay her costs. Injunctions are a complete nonsense. I rue the day when I was advised to take one out.”
Asked whether she denies trying to blackmail Mr Clarkson, Ms Hall’s spokesperson previously said: “Yes. She can prove that is untrue. She told me that is totally untrue. She can and will prove that.”
He and Frances split in 2014 when he grew close to PA Phillipa Sage, who he met on the set of Top Gear. They were together until 2017, when she he was spotted out with Lisa. “He’d actually told me, ‘I was born for you’, and asked me to stay the night a few days before he was out with Lisa,” she told Mail Online. “Then, one of my friends pointed out the photograph of him with another woman. I thought, ‘Oh yes, she’s definitely his type.
“She’s tall and blonde. He’s gone for the perfect upgrade: taller, skinnier, younger. So I was like, ‘F**k off, what are you doing when we are supposed to be working things out?’ ‘He told me to calm down. He told me she was just a friend, then a couple of weeks later he told me he wanted to be with her.” He has never confirmed or denied the claims.
Meanwhile, current partner Lisa has no desire to become his third wife. Speaking to Fabulous magazine, she said: “Mrs Clarkson? No, thank you, I like Lisa Hogan.”