Charlie Ireland

In fact, she stood Cheerful Charlie up three times.

Cheerful Charlie is Charlie Ireland from the programme Clarkson's Farm.

The question they were asking was...

Why would anyone start a business in this country right now?

And finally, celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson highlighted the challenges faced by growers and livestock producers during a surprise appearance at this month's Tory Party conference.

The TV presenter took to the stage with farm business advisor, cheerful Charlie Ireland from the series Clarkson's Farm at the invitation of Conservative Shadow Defra Secretary, Victoria Atkins.

[clapping] Oh.

Well, I... now I have to say, I, I hope these seats are more comfortable than the sofa in your office, Jeremy.

Seventy-seven was also very hot, and then the weather sort of went back to normal again.

Now we've had two hot summers, so I'm just hoping that next year will be okay again.

Charlie Ireland said many farmers faced an autumn cashflow crisis.

Cash has never been so tight on farms.

And now I want to discuss how our farmers need to deal with those problems.

Joining me today are Charlie Ireland, a farming consultant at Ceres Consultancy.

You may have seen him advising Jeremy Clarkson in his endeavours.

Nicola Cannon, Professor in Agriculture at the Royal Agricultural University, and Neil Ward, Professor of Rural and Regional Development at the University of East Anglia.

They need to preempt the challenges of extreme temperatures, extreme storms, wet winters, dry summers, and design agricultural systems that can cope with these and make investments where required or change systems of management so they are resilient.

And that's all we have time for, I'm afraid.

My thanks to Nicola Cannon, Charlie Ireland, Neil Ward and Tom Lancaster.

My conclusion? Move over, Tony.

Well, guests, we can't...

Don't forget Charlie Ireland.

Yeah, he was there.

I think that was quite a coup.

With the budget looming, Atkins says she will be doing everything she can to put pressure on the government to look at the damage caused by the Family Farm Tax.

And making an appearance at the conference was Clarkson's Farm stars Jeremy Clarkson and Charlie Ireland.

The pair joined Atkins for a Q&A in which she asked Clarkson whether he believed there was a better way to spend the Defra budget than on 34 quangos and a huge number of Whitehall officials.

She said currently there was one civil servant for every five farmers.

Clarkson pointed out that while bovine TB had been around for 200 years, the government still had not solved the issue, despite there being thousands of them sitting around working from home.

He referred to his own on-farm experience of bovine TB and said it had taken him just days to meet with vets and scientists to come up with a plan to minimize the risk of bTB returning to his farm, but Defra do not seem to want to do that, he said.

On planning, Charlie Ireland said there needs to be a sense check of what questions are being asked by authorities.

And speaking of his own council, Mr. Clarkson said apart from the unbelievably low IQ of the people on the planning committee, they are massively overworked and decisions are taking too long to come back.

So I want to ask you, can you trust the Conservatives with the economy again? Do you think they at least are getting the semblance of some sort of solution to our economic problems? Or have they got a long way to go? 0345 6060 973.

Well, Jeremy Clarkson appeared on stage alongside his land agent, Charlie Ireland, and the Tories' Shadow Environment Secretary, Victoria Atkins.

And Clarkson reflected on how hard it is, how hard it's become to run a business in Britain.

I am actually looking, as we speak, quite hard into the possibility of opening another pub.