Karine Le Marchand, France’s Jeremy Clarkson, becomes heroine of farmers’ protests

A French tractor driver blockading Paris told The Telegraph on Monday that the country’s farmers needed a celebrity figurehead like Britain’s Jeremy Clarkson.

In Karine Le Marchand, they just might have found one.

The presenter of a reality TV show which helps lonely French farmers find a life partner has become a figurehead for the protesters after joining their blockade outside Paris to tell them: “The French are with you”.

Le Marchand had already been dubbed “the Michelle Obama of French agriculture” in France for 13 years hosting L’amour est dans le pré (Love is in the Pasture), the hit farmer-matchmaking show on the M6 channel.

However, she has gone up another notch in farmers’ eyes after turning up to a tractor camp at Jossigny, east of Paris, on Monday to lend her support to their “siege” of the French capital and other major cities.

“Are there any single men here?,” said the 55-year-old presenter as she handed out 300 croissants to protesters. “This time, the French are with you. They have understood your distress.”

The croissant was a “French symbol of protest” she insisted as it was created by Parisian bakers to avoid a tax on salt by replacing it with sugar.

“If you manage to have a tough, durable movement without violence, you will make a difference” she added, to cheers of “Merci Karine!”.

Robin Leduc, 30, who runs a 200-hectare farm in Canly, said he was a fan of the Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm, which charts the British ex-Top Gear presenter’s attempts at running a 1,000-acre farm in the Cotswolds.

“We need one of our French celebrities to do the same as Jeremy Clarkson. It’s everything he explained, that’s why and how we are here today,” he said.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Clarkson threw his weight behind the French farmers, wishing them “good luck” in a message written entirely in French.

“French farmers. I bet no one has ever said that before, but good luck, coming from England,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Le Marchand will host a special programme on Sunday evening on M6 and RTL devoted to the farmers’ crisis and to “suggest solutions”.

Back on Monday, the French TV host had joined another farmer checkpoint.

“They are determined but not aggressive,” she said. “It’s the gentlest social movement I’ve ever seen. They know that the French support them. I don’t want to buy only foreign products and so on. I’m at their disposal, but I’m not a farmer, so I have to stay in my place. But if I can help them, I will.”

Pierre de Saint-Pastou, who took part in her show in season seven explained why she had a special place in French farmers’ hearts. “We saw this tall, beautiful woman who could parade around in Dior, but she was among farmers in welly boots. She didn’t hesitate to grab udders and plunge her hands into manure. Then people saw that she was sincere”, he told BFMTV.

On Monday, Le Marchand complained that the so-called Egalim law supposed to improve farmers’ remuneration and increase the value of agricultural production “is not being applied and that’s not normal”.

“Everyone tells me how unbearable the paperwork is becoming – the controls are also preventing them from working – how they no longer have their hands in the earth as they would like to do”, she said.

The star also criticised the supposedly gastronomic French for buying low-grade foreign food instead of quality French fare.

“Consumers can make a difference. At some point, you have to stop buying crap”, she said, later explaining her comments were not aimed at the poorest consumers.

Originally a city dweller from Nancy, eastern France, Le Marchand now owns a farm with a hectare of cultivated land, where she plants crops grown by several farmers from the L’amour est dans le pré series, “to put it into practice, to see first-hand the problems and constraints”.

In 2013, she was made a Knight of the Order of Agricultural Merit for services to French farming and took some of the show’s contestants with her to the agriculture ministry.

Mr Saint Pastou said that she was given a heroine’s welcome every time she visited France’s annual Agriculture Fair in Paris. “She’s been walking the show for years, she’s a star,” he said. “She has to travel with bodyguards. When she’s there, she lights up the stands with love.”

Her “urban face” acted as a bridge between farmers and the rest of the French population, he added, helping her become France’s 18th most popular personality last year and second favourite woman.

Last November, she was promoted to Officer of Agricultural Merit. Receiving the award, she confessed to being totally ignorant when she started.

“I used to ask farmers stupid questions, which made them laugh a lot,” she said. “For example, for a long time I thought cows were fed on crab, before I knew what oil cake (fertiliser) was”. The French term “tourteau” means crab and fertiliser.

She has already come in for criticism from Cyril Hanouna, another celebrity presenter. The populist chat show host said: “Who cares if Karine Le Marchand calls on the French to consume French?

“Karine Le Marchand, the great defender of farmers, is quietly at home – certainly in her beautiful flat – and is encouraging the French to consume French food, but she should know something. It’s that French is very expensive”, said the presenter of Touche pas à mon poste (Don’t Touch My Telly) on C8, a channel owned by Vincent Bolloré, the hard-Right tycoon.

One of his commentators, Gilles Verdez, added on Monday: “You don’t arrive on a motorbike with a pack of journalists and some croissants.

“If she supports (farmers), that’s fine, but she can do it discreetly. This lacks discretion and therefore sincerity and honesty.”

Asked to respond, Le Marchand said: “I don’t give a damn. So I should’t have come? For a couple of trolls? Do you really think I need publicity at my age? I couldn’t care less about these people.”

Mr Saint Pastou, as one of her former show participants, leapt to the presenter’s defence.

“Her stance doesn’t surprise me at all. I always thought she was the Michelle Obama… or the Marianne of French agriculture.”

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