The ex-model who’s keeping up with Clarkson! Irish-born Lisa Hogan who was ‘discovered’ by John Cleese and survived a crash on her Baron ex-husband’s jet proves she’s more than a match for Jeremy on the farm (and even stepped in to film when Covid hit)
- Dublin-born former model and artist, 51, has been dating ex-Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson since 2017
- Filmed much of Clarkson’s Farm, the new Amazon Prime series documenting his attempts to run Diddly Squat
- Mother-of-three Lisa is 12 years younger than twice-divorced Clarkson and has a string of acting credits
- Was discovered by John Cleese and went on to marry Madrid based billionaire Baron Steven Bentinck
- Nearly died in a plane crash while travelling in his £1million Lear jet to film Fierce Creatures in August 1997
Once the wife of a multi-millionaire baron and a successful actress after being taken under the wing of Monty Python legend John Cleese, Lisa Hogan has lived and travelled all over the world.
But these days the Dublin-born former model and artist, 51, spends most of her time gallivanting around fields in muddy boots and running the shop on boyfriend Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm in the Cotswolds.
It was Lisa who, due to the pandemic, ended up filming much of Clarkson’s Farm, the new Amazon Prime series which documents the ex-Top Gear presenter’s frequently failed attempts to run his 1,000-acre farm, much to the bemusement and exasperation of the locals.
Mother-of-three Lisa is 10 years younger than twice-divorced Clarkson, 61, whom she has been dating since 2017, but almost matches him in height at a statuesque 6ft 2in beside his 6ft 5in frame. And if you thought Clarkson had led a colourful life, his girlfriend’s is equally as eventful.
Educated at the prestigious Alexandra College in Ireland, she got her big break in acting in the early 1990s, when John Cleese employed her as a researcher. She was later cast as a sea lion keeper in the 1997 comedy flick Fierce Creatures, starring alongside Cleese, Michael Palin and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Mother-of-three Lisa is 10 years younger than twice-divorced Clarkson, whom she has been dating since 2017, but almost matches him in height at a statuesque 6ft 2in beside his 6ft 5in frame (pictured together on holiday in Asia in 2019)
These days Dublin-born former model and artist Lisa, 51, spends most of her time gallivanting around fields in muddy boots and running the shop on boyfriend Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm in the Cotswolds
Lisa was cast as a sea lion keeper in the 1997 comedy flick Fierce Creatures, starring alongside John Cleese, Michael Palin and Jamie Lee Curtis
Lisa was once referred to as John Cleese’s muse, but denied any suggestion they were romantically involved, telling Irish Independent journalist Barry Egan: ‘We certainly didn’t have an affair. We were seen quite a lot but we used to work together. We got on well.’ Pictured together in 2008
Jeremy Clarkson and Lisa Hogan, pictured attending The Sunday Times AA Gill Award for emerging food critics at The River Cafe on June 16, 2019, have been dating since 2017
It was Lisa who filmed much of Clarkson’s Farm, the new Amazon Prime series which documents the ex-Top Gear presenter’s frequently failed attempts to run his 1,000-acre farm, much to the bemusement and exasperation of the locals
She was once referred to as Cleese’s muse, but denied any suggestion they were romantically involved, telling Irish Independent journalist Barry Egan: ‘We certainly didn’t have an affair. We were seen quite a lot but we used to work together. We got on well.’
In August 1997, Lisa – then aged 25 – had a near-death experience when her partner’s £1million private Lear jet crash-landed on the A40 dual-carriageway after it overshot the runway at RAF Northolt in London.
Lisa was the only passenger on board, travelling from Palma to rehearse for Fierce Creatures in the UK, and told how she was ‘almost a goner’ after the captain had tried to make her sit in a certain part of the plane.
‘I insisted on sitting where I was, which was just as well because that was the area where the van came through when we crashed and I would have been killed instantly,’ she told Egan. ‘When the plane crashed I phoned the production office [of the film] and told them I was stuck in a traffic jam. They were like, “Everybody’s late because a bloody plane landed on the motorway”. I was embarrassed.’
Lisa married Baron Steven Bentinck, a Madrid based billionaire and private art collector, in the late 1990s and had three children – Wolfe, Alice and Lizzy. Pictured together at the premier of Fierce Creatures at the Empire Cinema Leicester Square in 1997
Lisa and Bentinck split in 2005 and Lisa allegedly employed Prince Charles’s divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton. They officially separated in 2011
‘Baroness Bentick’ Lisa pictured in November 2009 at the Red Cross Ball 2005 ‘H20 the Element of Life’ at the Room by the River Upper Ground
Her partner at the time was Baron Steven Bentinck, a Madrid based billionaire and private art collector, and nephew of the late steel tycoon Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon Heini, who once boasted he had £50m of annual disposable income.
The couple married in the late 1990s and had three children – Wolfe, Alice and Lizzy – with Lisa dividing her time between London, New York, a mansion in Klosters – the exclusive Swiss ski resort – Norris Castle on the Isle of Wight, and Moyns Park – a Grade I listed Elizabethan country house on Lord Ivar Mountbatten’s 444 acre stately pile in Essex. They’d also holiday on Bentinck’s £5million Zaca A Te Moana yacht – a 150ft replica of Errol Flynn’s famous yacht Zaca.
Lisa and Bentinck split in 2005 and Lisa allegedly employed Prince Charles’s divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton. They officially separated in 2011. By this point Lisa was a fully fledged member of high society, counting the likes of AA Gill and Bryan Ferry as friends.
Lisa, who lost her father Maurice Hogan, an architect, when she was 14 after he dropped dead of a heart attack, is the step-daughter of Raymond Keaveney, former director of the National Gallery in Dublin.
Her mother is ex-model Arlene Underwood, whose ‘grit’ Lisa has inherited; at 41 she was widowed with four young daughters and enrolled at Trinity College for four years studying for a doctorate before setting up Friends of the National Gallery.
‘I saw her pushing through and going into a lot of zones that she’d never been in before. I’d come home with my sisters after school and mum would just be writing these essays. She’d say, “I haven’t used my brain for so long, and I can’t ever remember writing anything like this”, and she’d just be sobbing,’ Lisa recalled. ‘I’m so proud of her.’
She’s also inherited her parents’ artistic skills; Lisa runs a studio in London where she crafts figurative and animal sculptures which are much admired on Instagram.
In an interview with Amazon about running Diddly Squat Farm, Lisa said she’s ‘learned a lot’ – largely as her boyfriend ‘didn’t have a clue’ while she’s ‘quite practical’.
Clarkson – who has three children, Katya, Emily and Finlo – praised his partner for ‘working her socks off’ on their new endeavour, adding: ‘I think she’s really enjoying doing that, because she’s even less of a country girl than I am – though she’ll probably say different’
In an interview with Amazon about running Diddly Squat Farm, Lisa said she’s ‘learned a lot’ – largely as her boyfriend ‘didn’t have a clue’ while she’s ‘quite practical’
‘He knows roads, but he doesn’t know land that much,’ she said. ‘There was a big learning curve, but he’s such a prolific character, once he puts his head to something it’s just full-on.’
She added that she keeps trying to move to London but ‘must be a country girl at heart’ because she ‘always seems to end up there’.
‘And that’s where I seem to be happiest,’ she admitted. ‘I have a studio in London that I try to go to once a week, and Jeremy calls it “pavement-itis” where I just need the pavement under my feet.’
Meanwhile Clarkson – who has three children, Katya, Emily and Finlo – praised his partner for ‘working her socks off’ on their new endeavour, adding: ‘I think she’s really enjoying doing that, because she’s even less of a country girl than I am – though she’ll probably say different.
Like the show’s farmhands, Lisa is not one to be cowed by the bombastic presenter in the show. In one scene she gives him short shrift when she discovers that rather than a pond to attract more animal life to the farm, Clarkson has, in fact, created a muddy quagmire
Lisa inherited her parents’ artistic skills; Lisa runs a studio in London where she crafts figurative and animal sculptures which are much admired on Instagram
‘She was born in Dublin and has lived in Switzerland, Majorca, and London… and yet there she is with her filthy Doc Martens on, stomping around, running that farm shop and loving it.’
Like the show’s farmhands, Lisa is not one to be cowed by the bombastic presenter in the show. In one scene she gives him short shrift when she discovers that rather than a pond to attract more animal life to the farm, Clarkson has, in fact, created a muddy quagmire.
‘What the f*** are you doing up here?’ she erupts. ‘It’s a wetland area,’ retorts Clarkson.
‘Holy s***, Jeremy! What are you gonna do with all this soil? Nothing’s going to come and live here!’ she responds. She also witnessed both the moment Clarkson gets stung on the bottom by a bee, and when a truculent sheep catches him with a well-aimed kick to the groin.
Source: Read Full Article
