Jimmy Doherty
“Albert Einstein said if bees became extinct tomorrow, we wouldn’t be far behind, and it’s true,” says Jimmy Doherty – celebrity farmer, TV presenter and, in his new Channel 4 show, bee crusader. “One in every three spoonfuls of food is down to pollinating insects, so it’s about our own survival.”
The warning is stark. Bees are crucial for pollinating our crops to make them grow, but habitat loss, climate change, pesticides and disease are causing a worrying decline in their numbers. In Britain alone, a third of bee species have disappeared since 1980.
That’s why the 45-year-old is on a mission to reverse the potentially devastating situation, and why the title of his two-part series was originally Can Jimmy Save the Bees? No pressure, then. “No pressure at all!” he laughs.
“Environmental shows can be pretty heavy-going, and rightly so, because it’s a serious situation. But to engage people, you’ve got to have positivity. Everyone’s had enough of doom and gloom, and we wanted to show that we can make a change.”
Focusing on the area around Peterborough, the show – now renamed Jimmy’s Big Bee Rescue – follows Jimmy as he spends a year working with a farm, community park, residential street, primary school and the local council to create bee-friendly habitats and increase pollinator numbers. The coronavirus curveball (and being stung in the face) made it quite the journey, but he’s staying upbeat.
“We thought that if we could double the bee population by making a few positive changes, that could inspire other councils and residents to do the same thing around the country,” he says, adding that absolutely everyone can help.
“The more bee-friendly flowers you can grow in your garden or window box, the better. A bee will probably fly for 40 minutes flat out, then it needs to stock up with energy. If your garden is full of nectar-rich flowers, it can have a little drink, build up some energy and get back to its nest. Simple things can have a massive effect.”
The natural world has been a lifelong passion for Jimmy. Growing up in rural Essex, where he became best friends with Jamie Oliver as a toddler, he was an ardent bug-hunter and spent much of his childhood in the long grass, prodding grasshoppers and catching butterflies.
“I was fascinated by animals,” he recalls. “I turned my dad’s garage into a reptile house, and the carport into an aviary. But I was really rubbish at building enclosures, so I’d come home from school and all my budgies would be flying around the village.”
After studying zoology at university, Jimmy began a PhD in entomology [the study of insects], but abandoned it to try farming instead.
“I left purely because the vibrancy of nature I fell in love with as a kid had become more about looking down microscopes,” he says, adding that September 11th was the final straw. “I remember being in a basement at Coventry University, identifying different fly species, and I thought ‘If that happened here, all that would be left of me would be a skeleton and a pile of flies’. I wanted to get back to that excitement again.”
He set his heart on rearing pigs, and the following year a BBC film crew followed Jimmy and his future wife Michaela (who he’d met when she was working on one of Jamie Oliver’s shows) as they set up a rare-breeds piggery. Since Jimmy’s Farm, he’s seldom been off our screens, presenting programmes ranging from Food Unwrapped to Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast.
When he’s not filming, the father-of-four is at Jimmy’s Farm and Wildlife Park near Ipswich where, naturally, pollinating insects thrive. And, ever the optimist, Jimmy refuses to be panicked by the climate emergency.
“The positive way to view it is that we’ve got an opportunity to pull ourselves back from the brink,” he says. “If we don’t make changes now, we are in serious trouble. But every great journey starts with the first step, and we can all do our little bit.”
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in August 2020 (c) Waitrose