“I want tractors there, I want foragers there.” That is Kaleb Cooper’s wish list for his wedding. His fiancée, Taya Wilkinson, has other ideas.
“Taya’s like I don’t really want tractors there if I’m being honest, and I’m going, you haven’t really got a choice!” Cooper told the Daily Mail. He is the 27-year-old farm manager who became a fixture of the Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm, now in its fifth series, as the gilet-wearing sidekick to Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson, 66, often calls him “the foetus.”
The couple have said little in public about the summer ceremony, which the Daily Mail’s sources describe as imminent. Cooper gave the paper the first details.
Most of the planning has not been his, and he says so. “I want to say I’m really hands on but that’s a lie,” he said. “I can’t really say that, it is Taya that has done the majority of it.” Wilkinson is the mother of their three children: Oscar, five, Willa, three, and Ashton, whose birth they announced last August.
“It’s both of our dreams to get married,” Cooper said. “But Taya is very much like ‘I want it in a certain way, I want my dress to be a certain way’, which is good.” He added: “I think everyone should have that in their life and go, right, if you’re going to get married, it’s a very special day for everybody, family included, so therefore you’ve got to have your own say of how you want it to go.”
Give and take
There has been some trading. Cooper has agreed to things like yellow dresses, and Wilkinson has accepted that the day will be very farm-driven.
The wedding will stay private, though the guest list is long. “We get married in a local place and then back to a farm for a big party,” he said. “It’s a big do, so it’s a big guest list.” He expects a mix of theatre people, television people and farmers. “We’re all in the same room, so it’s gonna go wild I think.”
Clarkson will be there, a week after announcing that his prostate cancer is in remission. Cooper, who stood by Clarkson through his illness, said of him: “He’s got a strong mind on him.”
Clarkson’s Hawkstone brewery, co-owned with entrepreneur Johnny Hornby, will supply unlimited beer. “It’s just literally Hawkstone on tap,” Cooper said, grinning. “You can imagine the kegs and instead of filling up your glass, you can just sit underneath the keg if you want. That’s the feral farm wedding we’re gonna have.”
Ten years together
Cooper and Wilkinson have been together for 10 years. He proposed on Christmas Day 2022, getting down on one knee, and announced it on social media: “She said yes!”
Wilkinson stays out of the spotlight. Her Instagram following is 334, against Cooper’s 3.2 million.
Cooper has his own four-part series due later this year, in which he flies to Australia to see how farmers work there. He has left Britain only once, on a road trip with Clarkson to the Netherlands.
