Kaleb Cooper has spoken publicly for the first time since his close friend and Amazon Prime co-star Jeremy Clarkson shared news of his cancer diagnosis.
Clarkson, the former Top Gear presenter, 66, disclosed on a recent episode of Clarkson’s Farm on Prime Video that he had been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer.
Now, Cooper, 27, who appears alongside Clarkson in the popular series, has offered an update on how his friend is doing.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail on Thursday evening, Cooper said: “He is good. The spirits are high, which is good.”
He added: “If anything like this happens to any of your friends — and you just said to my best mate — you’ve got to be supported through that whole journey.”
Cooper continued: “And that’s where I’ve been. I’ve been right by his side and his spirits are really good, so thank you.”
Kaleb Cooper has broken his silence after his ‘best mate’ and Amazon Prime co-star Jeremy Clarkson revealed his cancer diagnosis
He continued by praising Jeremy for his determination to beat the disease and stressing the importance of early detection.
Kaleb said: ‘He’s strong-minded, he’s got a strong mind on him, which is good.
‘And the message about catching anything early is quite important.
‘That’s the main thing, but you’ve gotta keep checking, you know what I mean, it’s all these things, you know, people can sit there and say I’m busy, busy, busy.
But actually sometimes you’ve gotta go I’m gonna just have to check and see if I’m OK.’
During the emotional scenes, Jeremy heartbreakingly said to Kaleb: ‘I’ve got cancer.’
The TV presenter said he expected to be ‘fine’ but would be out of action ‘for a while’, before revealing in the final episode of the series that he had undergone an operation to remove part of his prostate.
He said: ‘I won’t know whether it’s worked or not until November probably… The prostate, 10 per cent of it’s dead, the 10 per cent where the cancer is.’
Speaking from a hospital bed at the end of the season finale, Clarkson revealed he had experienced complications during treatment.
Former Top Gear host Jeremy, 66, revealed he had been diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer during a recent episode of his Prime Video series Clarkson’s Farm
He said: ‘We started season five with me in a hospital bed and here we are at the end of season five and I’m back in a hospital bed.’
The presenter then reflected on the future of the show.
Jeremy added: ‘What I wanted to say was if this is all successful, I’ll see you for season six, and if it isn’t, I won’t. Take care, everyone.’
The diagnosis comes almost two years after Clarkson underwent a heart procedure, which saw him fitted with two stents to improve blood flow to the heart.
He said his doctor had told him to stop working following the operation and that he had been advised to replace work with golf in a newspaper column at the time.
The TV presenter previously quit smoking after contracting pneumonia on holiday in Spain.
Clarkson’s Farm follows the long-time television presenter and his crew as they navigate the challenges of running Diddly Squat Farm near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
Since deciding to run his farm in 2019 and subsequently launching his popular reality series, Clarkson has become a vocal supporter of farmers and attended a protest in London against the Government’s move to introduce inheritance tax on farmland in November 2024.
The sixth series of the show is due to air in 2027.
Kaleb, who is due to tie the knot to his fiancée Taya, was speaking as he launched his first ever TV advert with Hawkstone, the record-breaking beer and cider brand founded by Jeremy Clarkson, which made its much-anticipated television debut on Wednesday night after famously having its first-ever advert banned.
The brand aired a 40-second solus spot in the final break before England’s FIFA World Cup match against Croatia.
