'Jeremy Clarkson told me I was The One. But then he upgraded me'

‘Jeremy Clarkson told me I was The One. But then he upgraded me for Lisa as she didn’t nag him’: Phillipa Sage enjoyed a ‘decadent’ life with the star, but when she suspected he was cheating that was the end of romance she calls a ‘tumble dryer of chaos’

• Phillipa, 53,has now written about her ‘decadent’ life of parties with Clarkson
• She’s had six years of therapy which, she says, ‘saved me’ after the break up
• Jeremy Clarkson has now been with new girlfriend Lisa Hogan for five years

Phillipa Sage has been called many things in her colourful, frenetic life. ‘W***e’ by comedian Harry Enfield (‘He was joking. He didn’t mean it’, she says); a woman with ‘a strong sense of self’ by radio’s Chris Evans (‘one of my biggest compliments’) and ‘The One’ by her lover Jeremy Clarkson who, it turns out, didn’t mean it either.

Today, as the many millions of fans of the hugely popular series Clarkson’s Farm know, ‘the big man’, as Phillipa calls him, is living in rural bliss at his 1,000-acre Diddly Squat farm in the Cotswolds with girlfriend of five years Lisa Hogan.

And ‘The One’ who wasn’t the one? Well, Phillipa, 53, is now an author having written about her ‘decadent’ life of private jets, helicopters and yachts with the former Top Gear host, as they partied with just about every famous person on the planet.

Their on-off relationship, which lasted for more than a decade, was a passionate ‘meeting of heart, mind, body and soul,’ she says. ‘I was the only person in the world who told him to f*** off.’

But the thing he loved most about her, she tells me, was her ‘clever’ sense of humour — an affection that will be sorely tested should he happen to decode the blurb on the back of her book The Wonderful World Of Jeremy Clarkson.

‘Through the years they spent together, Phillipa really gets under the hood of the complex, under-estimated, national treasure that is Jeremy Clarkson,’ it reads. Which, on the face of it, is a very kind way to describe a former boyfriend — until you string together the first letter of ‘complex’, ‘under-estimated’ ‘national’ and ‘treasure’.

Phillipa Sage (right) and Jeremy Clarkson had an on-off relationship for more than a decade, which Ms Sage describes as ‘a tumble dryer of chaos’

Phillipa remains deeply affected by the years she spent with Clarkson, 62. The break-up took such a toll on her she says she lost a stone in weight in less than a fortnight, and pretty much her sanity

‘Yes, he’s definitely complex.’ She chews the word over. Her eyes flash. Let’s just say these days Phillipa would no more pass the time of day with Clarkson than sniff one of the This Smells Like My B******s candles he flogs from his farm shop.

For, as she reveals in this exclusive interview, her years with Clarkson were, in fact, ‘a tumble dryer of chaos’ that ended in acrimony, tears and a nervous breakdown.

‘He’d actually told me, ‘I was born for you’ and asked me to stay the night a few days before he was out with Lisa.’

‘Then, one of my friends pointed out the photograph of him with another woman. I thought, ‘Oh yes, she’s definitely his type. She’s tall and blonde. He’s gone for the perfect upgrade: taller, skinnier, younger.’ So I was like ‘f*** off’, what are you doing when we are supposed to be working things out?

‘He told me to calm down. He told me she was just a friend, then a couple of weeks later he told me he wanted to be with her.’

This is a woman whose emotional turmoil is such that her mood turns on a sixpence. She’s been through six years of therapy which, she says, ‘saved me’, although I suspect nothing has been as much of a tonic as the veiled insult on the back of her book.

He still tries to make contact on her birthday, although she has blocked him.

‘That was one of our connections in my romantic head — and his. His first wife and his first girlfriend, I believe, had the same birthday as me: February 26. I’m a Pisces. He’s an Aries — a f***ing great ram.’

Phillipa remains deeply affected by the years she spent with Clarkson, 62. The break-up took such a toll on her she says she lost a stone in weight in less than a fortnight, and pretty much her sanity.

An honest soul, she truly believed in his love for her until what she calls her ‘horrible week’ began.

‘Jeremy was due to fly out to Africa to film their first big film for Amazon and I thought he was focusing on his new job. He said he’d gone to the office because he was very busy with all the production.

‘My dad [who sadly died last month] had a terrible accident falling down the stairs. I was on my way to the hospital to see if he was dead or alive. 

‘I knew Jeremy would want to speak to me before getting on the plane being the needy whatsit he is and obviously I wanted to speak to him because I was upset about my dad. 

‘When I called, he shut the phone off which he never does. I thought, “Oh, he must be in a meeting”. Because I thought he was in the office.

‘Eventually, I found out he was in the pub.’

Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm in Chipping Norton has a farm shop and cafe, and attracts many fans of the former Top Gear presenter

Jeremy Clarkson and girlfriend Lisa Hogan attend Wimbledon 2022. Clarkson told his former partner Phillipa ‘I was born for you’ just days before being photographed with Lisa

Perhaps it was women’s intuition but she went to his flat— like Miss Marple on speed. Whatever she discovered there, it devastated her.

‘I was physically sick. I realised where the word gutted came from because that’s how I felt. And, yes, I was angry. We had everything.

‘One of his best friends told me, ‘You’re the one. Everyone has someone they are truly in love with and you’re his’.

‘I truly believed we were going to be happy ever after.

‘As someone said to me, the problem was I’d become the homemaker. I was with the builders on the [Diddly Squat] farm. I was buying carpets and curtains and we’d gone shopping together.

‘If you become the main woman or the wife, there’s a vacancy, isn’t there?’ Phillipa is a striking woman who is 6ft in her stockinged feet and looks uncannily similar to Jeremy’s current partner, Lisa.

There was, of course, also The One before Phillipa — his wife of 21 years Frances and the mother of his three children Emily, Finlo and Katya, who were still at school when Phillipa filled the vacancy.

Jeremy and Frances separated in 2011 — six years before Phillipa’s relationship with Clarkson ended.

Now Phillipa is a compassionate soul with a ’17 but going on five-year-old’ son Alfie, who suffers with Fragile X syndrome [an inherited condition that causes learning and cognitive disabilities].

She loves her son deeply and doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who would happily wreck someone else’s family. ‘I hated it,’ she says. ‘But I truly believed he was unhappy in his marriage. I’m not the first person to fall in love with someone who’s married. I didn’t want to be a mistress.

‘That’s why I told him to f*** off on numerous occasions. I didn’t want to be in that situation, but he was very persuasive and I believed in love.’

Phillipa was in her 20s and working as an event organiser at the London International Motor Show when she first met Clarkson. He was 36 and had been married to Frances, his manager and second wife, for three years.

Clarkson’s first marriage, to Alex Hall, lasted only six months. ‘I thought he was obnoxious, which is probably what most people think, then I got to know what I call the real Jeremy Clarkson. He’s fascinating because he’s bombastic and arrogant but there’s a softer, kind side.

‘He is one of those people who can talk about anything and everything. He knows anything and everything and, if he doesn’t know it, he’ll make it up.

‘That first time we were just drunk at a party but, oh my God, we genuinely got on well. He started his charm offensive but we weren’t a full-blown affair until I was 30-something.’

Phillipa was separated from Alfie’s father and had returned to work for the production team of Top Gear Live in 2007 when she was, as she says, ‘fully committed to him’.

The ‘tumble dryer of chaos’ included party after party in London’s swankiest clubs and restaurants, on private islands, country estates and some of the poshest dining rooms in the country. 

She sank shots with former Prime Minister David Cameron, got down on the dance floor with Mick Jagger, hit it off with Hugh Grant and partied with the powerful, the famous and the wealthy in a high-octane world, fuelled, at times, by vast amounts of alcohol.

Of the former PM, she says: ‘I really liked him and loved Sam [Cameron’s wife, Samantha]. I had really genuine conversations with them. The night of the shots, to be fair, he only had one then he was gone because it was the Russian first invasion of Ukraine, I think.

‘That life is like a fantasyland. Of course I know how lucky I was to go to all these amazing places but it was false. I was happiest when we were on our own.

‘You know, Jeremy once said he hated parties. I was shocked because he seemed addicted to them, but it was almost like he had a sense of duty to go.

‘We had a fantastic holiday in Lake Como and on a boat on the Canal du Midi. Jeremy was very happy on that plastic boat.

‘One of the things he loved about it was, because you were on the water, it forced you to slow down, so you had to relax.’

Then, in 2015, Jeremy’s fast-paced world jolted to a sudden halt when he was first suspended then fired by the BBC for punching a Top Gear producer with such force he had to go to A&E.

‘When it went wrong with the BBC I felt, God, this is a golden opportunity to simplify your life,’ Phillipa says. 

‘He’s actually a bit of a hippy, walking around in bare feet. We were very happy to cook together — very happy to go shopping. He used to dream of an empty diary and pottering around the farm and just hanging out with me,’ she continues.

‘He wanted to just sit on the veranda and watch the sun go down. He was keen to have me as his farmer’s wife. He said I’d make a good farm girl simply because I managed to open and close big farm gates.

‘I’d do all the chores with him. We were going to clear an area where there was a waterfall and a lake and maybe build a little lodge there. He told me he just wanted to write. That’s what he loved most. And he was going to build a top floor [at the house] for Alfie and a carer.

‘I’m shocked at what he’s done with it now because I thought he always wanted to keep his private life private. He wanted peace and quiet.

‘He talked about me running the shop — a sort of mini Daylesford — but like it being a sweet vegetable barn not a blimming commercial enterprise. I don’t get it.’

Today there’s a lot she ‘doesn’t get’ about Jeremy. She truly thought he was her ‘soulmate’. Their relationship troubles had been hard on them both. ‘Andy Wilman — his best friend and producer — was also begging me not to give up on him.

‘It was actually A.A. Gill’s illness [Adrian Gill the travel writer, food critic and one of Jeremy’s closest friend who died of cancer in December 2016] that drew us back together, because we were very close as a couple with him and Nicola Formby [the journalist and wife he married just weeks before his death].

‘We’d been at Adrian’s funeral together and were obviously upset. I was pretty fragile.’

Phillipa got the impression there was still a chance things could work out between them. ‘That was when he said to me, ‘I was born for you’.’ The following day he was photographed with Lisa.

Phillipa last saw Clarkson a few weeks later at his home. ‘We’d been to-ing and fro-ing on text and phone calls. I wanted to give it one more shot because, at that point, he really was the love of my life.

‘He said he’d made up his mind he wanted to be with Lisa because she didn’t nag him.’ She pauses. ‘I walked out crying and that was the end of that. He obviously wanted to have the last word.’

She hands me a copy of her book about her life with the ‘complex, under-estimated, national treasure that is Jeremy Clarkson’.

Some might not blame her for the parting shot.

The Wonderful World Of Jeremy Clarkson, by Phillipa Sage, published by Ad Lib (RRP £9.99) is out on July 21. instagram.com/pj.sage/

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