Comedy of the Week - Me and the Farmer

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Comedian and farmer Jim Smith is a proud teuchter. What is a teuchter? Well, Jim will tell you.Me and the Farmer is a stand up show chronicling Jim's life as a working farmer in rural Perthshire. This isn't an act. By day, Jim works the land and looks after his sheep and by night he performs stand up to sold out venues across Scotland.In each episode, Jim tells anecdotes about life on his family farm to a live audience in his nearest city of Perth. This is an honest, behind the scenes look at what it takes to be a modern farmer.Written and Performed by Jim Smith Produced by Lauren Mackay Sound by Andy Hay and Barry Jackson Photo credit: Chris Quilietti

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Sorry, hang on a second. Hello and welcome to BBC Radio 4's Me and the Farmer. I'm Jim Smith, a 45 year old farmer and comedian, and I'm here to tell you a few stories about my life growing up in the 80s and 90s on a family farm here in Perthshire. Anyway, time to hear more about my life as a farmer with some tales I shared with the fine people of Perth.

We'll see you there. Now, it's a Radio 4 show, so I'm going to explain what a few farming terminologies mean so that everyone listening can understand. And my producer, Lorne, has also stressed that I need to speak clearly and slowly or else this show is going to be like if Countryfell was presented by Taggart. So I will be talking a lot about yows. Do we know what yows are? Yes, lady sheep. Yes and coos? Cows. Very well done. Right, finally and most importantly do we all know what the term tshuchter is? Tshuchter. How we would explain this to folks south of the border. It's a country lad, a hillbilly. Yes, I am a proud chuchter, ladies and gentlemen.

In fact, I'm not much of a chuchter that my childhood skeleton set was just a single track road with passing places. I cannot emphasise enough how lucky I was to be born into a farming family where I grew up with my mum and dad and two big sisters, Claire and Caroline. With a million different occupations, countries, cities, towns and villages across the world, I have always felt blessed that the stock decided to drop me off at a farmhouse door 14 miles north of Perth near the banks of the River Tay in June 1978. Our farm,

Stralocce, was a tenanted farm so we didn't own it but the farming business and everything that went with it, sheep, coos, hens, tractors, combines and a hefty overdraft was all ours. I am a farmer and proud of it and ever since the day I sat in my first pedal tractor at the age of two I knew there was nothing else I would like to do. I remember that day well, the playgroup summer outing. All the other kids had their tricycles and pedal cars, but I went in front with my ride on John Deere going very slowly up the pavement. And after 10 minutes, I must have had at least 15 toddlers

and tricycles, balance bikes and pedal cars, ringing their little bells, shaking their chubby little fists and shouting things like, get off the road, hurry up, and bloody farmers. You see, the thing is I was hooked early and under false pretenses as farming in the late seventies and early eighties was very good. The weather was good, the prices were good, these were heady days.

And I was tractor daft and in 1982, after a good year at the Tatties, my dad bought a brand new John Deere 2140. If you know your tractors, you'll know that this was groundbreaking. The ST2 round cab was a lap of luxury. Tinted glass, cup holder, radio cassette for those 80s power ballads, all finished off in brown, wipeable leather. It was basically Hugh Hefner's bedroom, With the only difference being the lubrication was gear oil 90. You see farming isn't just an occupation, it's a lifestyle. You're immersed in it. It's not nine to five, it's five to nine. But it's not just the long hours, it's the

fact you live on the workplace. You can't switch off mentally or even just escape for a couple of days. Life, work and play was just farming, farming, farming. Maybe my dad was a bit extreme that he didn't have any non-farming hobbies. I mean, other farmers do. Curling, football, rugby. Don't worry, I wasn't complaining. He was my hero and all through my childhood I was there by his side, whether it was in a tractor cab or going to a livestock market

or even just going for spare parts for the tatty harvester. If you think about it, ploughing matches, sheep shearing competitions, sheep dog trials, these are all just jobs on the farm that have been made into competitions. I'm not sure if any other industries do that, I mean do doctors do that? Is there a competition to see who's the best at cutting a leg off? Is there a North East Chirropetist of the Year competition? Okay ladies and gentlemen, now it's time for the gallbladder removal national final. Now don't get me wrong, my parents did try and encourage me into non-farming hobbies, but I just wasn't interested. Farming ran through my veins. If you cut me in half, well I would die. A huge part of growing up on the farm

was the annual pilgrimage to the Royal Highlands Show every June. This is Scotland's national agricultural show held at Ingleson, just next to the Edinburgh Airport. Now, to those listening not familiar with farming, I simply cannot emphasise enough just how important this event was for the rural community. Basically, Glastonbury for farmers. I used to get so excited about

the show, even more than Christmas. In fact I used to make a Highland show advent calendar for the month of June. It's a four day show and we would always go for at least a couple of days. For me it was all about the machinery, row upon row of shiny new tractors, balers, combines and tatty harvesters. We would all go as a family but at the entrance my sisters and mum would split and me and my dad would go and look at the latest kit. Looking forward to the day we could buy it second-hand 20 years' time.

LAUGHTER It took four days just to get around it as my dad would meet someone he knew every 20 yards. And it would be the same conversation. How's the weather been, Jim? How's your lambing? What's the price of tatties gonna do this year? And how long were you stuck on the Forth Road Bridge for this morning?

The day would always be rounded off for me getting a new farm toy, and we'd always leave by the west gate about 7 o'clock at night, both feet and throats exhausted, and we would pass the Herdmans bar, where about 800 young farmers had been drinking all day and were now ready for a party. Of course farming's full of sexual innuendos and I remember leaving a show about the age of 14 with my new farm toy and there was a young couple laying on the grass

snogging their faces off while still managing to hold the pint and not spill a drop. And one of my dad's pals saying well I didn't reckon if that lad's gonna sow his oats tonight but he's definitely working the ground. It was at this point in my life I realised there and then I'd prefer to have a beer in my hand rather than a farm toy. I joined young farmers that summer.

The farm was basically a 250 acre playground, however you would think that a Persher farm is a really safe place to grow up. There was a risk of an occasional earthquake with a Highland Fault Line nearby but to be honest a mouse farting would have probably registered higher on the Richter scale. But yet there was danger everywhere. I'm talking about gas guns, air rifles, chainsaws, axes, neap hashes, burning straw, gassing moles, dipping sheep, cutting thistles with a scythe so big even the Grim Reaper himself would need to go on a health and safety course, spraying acid on the tatties, asbestos sheeting,

salmonella eggs, demented turkeys, rampant rats, angry collies, crazy horses, jealous bulls and of course mad cows. Even the bloody sheep were radioactive after the Chernobyl disaster. Which to be honest did save a bit of money enlightening the lambing shed. I don't think there can be many professions where the offspring get so involved in the parents job. Maybe something like a corner shop or a hotel. But you couldn't imagine a dentist taking his son during an in-service day to help out with some fillings, could you?

I mean, picture the scene. There is a rather nervous patient sitting back in his dentist's chair getting ready to get numbed up while the dentist is getting his gown on. The patient then notices an 11-year-old boy washing his hands but also putting on a gown and gloves of his own. Who's this? Asks the patient. Oh, it's my son Willie, replies the dentist.

He's got the day off school today so he'll be working the drill. In fact, days off school were a treat, and as soon as I started the new term, I was counting the days for the holidays, especially the summer holidays. Seven weeks of absolute bliss. I should explain to our pals south of the border, our summer holidays were from the end of June till mid-August, so good timing for hay and sheep shearing,

but I would miss out on a harvest, and I was always a bit envious of farm kids in England and Wales that would have later holidays into September so they could spend most of their holidays on a combine harvester. I also had a farm of my own though to run for I, like every other farmer's son, had the most wonderful farm toy collection. This wasn't just farming, this was carpet farming. I didn't have a train set, sabutio or even a game boy but I loved my toy farm, that was real escap farming. I didn't have a train set, subutio or even a game boy but I loved my toy farm. That was real escapism. I didn't have to worry about machinery repairs, poor weather or vet spills because in carpet world the sun always shone. I would take over the house

and every room was a different field. I even did the traditional seven year crop rotation. So in 1989 the living room was silage, the spare bedroom was grain and the upstairs hallway was tatties. My dad also employed two full-time men so I think working alongside adults, mainly middle-aged men, did have an influence on me especially the way I would talk. Even as an eight-year-old I remember once getting detention from my teacher in primary four after I told her that Macaskill says there's meant to be a hoora rain coming on Friday night. That'll stem from spending weekends and holidays working alongside these guys lifting tatties or thinning neeps or dipping sheep. One neighbour in particular

was great crack. He also gave me a sound piece of advice one day and I would never forget. He says, James there's two possessions in life that you should never give someone a shot of. One your chainsaw the other one's your wife then he took another sook of his siggy and said because they'll both come back knackered. Good advice for a seven-year-old I'm sure you'll agree school was really a game of two halves for me. I really enjoyed primary school, but I wasn't a fan of high school. My primary school was called Glendelvin and sat in the country between the two villages

of Capeth and Spitalfield. It had about 60 pupils, with the seven years all split between three classrooms and teachers. But the defining feature was a massive grass playing field with two football goals. Unfortunately though, even a wee sleepy country school like ours couldn't escape the great divide that plagued so many Scottish schools. Half the schools supporting the green team, the other half supporting the blue team. Fights would break out. Chanting, even the teachers had to pick a side.

There was no middle ground. We either supported John Dears or Fords. As much as I loved primary school, it didn't really prepare me for Blair Gowrie High School as I went from a school of 50 pupils to 1200 pupils. You would think that there would have been a lot more chuchters at the school with the town of Blair Gowrie being so rural. Maybe there was more closet chuchters that I didn't know about. Although I was openly chuchter, I did try and blend in and make some pals

that lived in the town. But I got caught out one day, you see in the early 90s, Nirvana were the biggest band in the world. Of course, me being me, I'd never heard of Nirvana, but the day after their lead singer, Kurt Cobain, tragically died, the whole school was stunned. I mean, there was even a special assembly.

I jumped off the bus, none the wiser, and I'm like, what's going on today? My pal's like, Jim, Kurt Cobain just died. I'm like, oof, what year was he in? LAUGHTER It wasn't all that bad though. I enjoyed PE and craft and design. I actually quite enjoyed English too,

but only for a term and fourth year because I had a crush on the teacher and we were reading Sunset Song by Lewis Grasic Gibbon, a proper chuchter novel. There were some advantages to being a chuchter at high school. Firstly, as soon as there was a single snowflake, the school crapped itself and sent anyone that lived higher than three feet above sea level home straight away. Secondly, I always knew the dances at social dancing, which we did in early December for the Christmas dance as I was brought up listening to Robbie Shippard's Take the Floor on Radio Scotland on a Saturday night and going to Caillie dances.

So I was kind of like the John Travolta of Scottish country dancing. And when they played Jimmy Shands' Bluebell Poker, all the Toon Kids would clear the dance floor while I did all the moves. The paddy bar, the heel toe, heel toe, and of course, trying to spin your partner so hard that even the larger lasses would be airborne for a few seconds. And thirdly, a young tukter could sit a tractor road test at the tender age of 16 and have his or her independence

a whole year earlier than the cool kids. And it was quite usual to see the occasional tractor parked up beside a few scooters outside the school. In fact sometimes us farm kids would gather round the tractors at lunch time with the hoods all up looking at the engines and loud music blaring. Usually Cotton Eye Joe. So I left school at the end of fifth year ready for agricultural college. So on the last day I took the tractor in, sat my last exam, told my English teacher to call me, picked up my... picked up my crafting design project, a three-legged stool in case you were interested, shook the rector's hand, jumped into the tractor, put on my top gun CD and

did one final fly pass of LaGowrie High School. Opening up the throttle, took a left for Aberdeen, and with Kenny Loggins egging me on, I roared into the next chapter of my life at breakneck 15 miles an hour. Thanks for listening to Me and the Farmer, to find out if my social dancing skills and the three-legged stool came in handy

in the Granite City. Tune in for the next episode. Cheers to new! Me and the Farmer was written and performed by me, Jim Smith. It was produced by Lord Mackay and was a BBC Scotland production for Radio 4. Thanks for listening to the Comedy of the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4. If you want more, check out the Friday night comedy podcast, featuring the news quiz and dead ringers.

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