About the Farmer

Paul Heiney (a great writer and broadcaster, married to Libby Purvis) once talked about the problems of keeping his broadcasting career going while also trying to run a farm. Anyway, he walked into Broadcasting House in London one morning asking himself if he was the only person there who had buried a dead sheep that morning. The answer would have been no! I probably buried one too. (Sheep died real easy).

For the last ten years I have lived a weird double life, one day talking about politics into a camera outside in some unglamorous location for the Politics Show on BBC1 and the next standing in the yard at home talking to Mr and Mrs Green about their order for a five and a half kilo boned and rolled with no giblets. Our seven acre farm is growing slowly but surely into something I will one day be quietly proud of and I still manage to appear most weeks on network television without ever being recognised.

On our organic turkey farm I do most of the heavy lifting and love producing something natural and organic for people to eat on such a beautiful special day like Christmas day.

Max Cotton