The speculation has begun and already Jeremy Clarkson is being touted as the host of new show, ‘Top Tractor’.

The omens are not good. During a special Top Gear tractor driving challenge in 2007, each presenter had to start their tractor, hook up to a four-wheel trailer and reverse out of the TV studio's car park. James May couldn’t even start his tractor, Richard Hammond clouted a Vauxhall Astra on the way out - and Clarkson gave up due to his failure to be able to reverse a trailer.

Can we see Clarkson as the face of farm machinery? An advocate of Extreme Mowtoring?  Don’t even mention letting him loose with a chainsaw!

Even if Clarkson seems to have ducked out of swapping his Ferrari 458 Spider for a New Holland T7000, the Stig appears always up for it, gunning a JCB Fastrac or racing Honda’s Fast Mower. The team did however famously convert a Claas Dominator into a giant snowblower. So they have form.

Mind you, I suspect the dark arts of politics at work.  Clarkson is a neighbour of the Prime Minister. Government has increased the speed limit for tractors in March from 20mph to a dazzling 25mph, the very month that Clarkson gets his P45. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.

So should the AEA extend the hand of friendship and opportunity to Clarkson? They had better get the best caterers they can find in Peterborough to lay on the hot spread for his ‘interview’ . . . or else.