Jeremy Clarkson has hit out at Brian May over his stance defending badgers.
The Queen guitarist has long been a champion of the animal, leading campaigns against culling them.
Clarkson, meanwhile, has documented his struggles with badgers on his Prime Video documentary series Clarkson’s Farm.
Speaking ahead of the series two launch, Clarkson claimed that the threat of bovine tuberculosis to his cattle – which can be spread by badgers – was one of the most difficult areas to cover on screen.
“We thought, ‘What do we do?’ because if you want to make a popular show you have to say, ‘Oh, look at the little cuddly-wuddly badgers,’” Clarkson told The Daily Mail.
“But I thought: no, it’s a farming show, and you’d lose your core audience, the farmers, if you went around, saying, ‘Look at these sweet little animals.”
He continued: “So, I actually called them b*****ds and showed people what they actually do. It’s truthful.
“These are not nice animals. Do not be fooled by Brian May. This is what badgers do. This is how much heartache they’re causing to people who’ve worked for generations to build up a farm that’s been wiped out by badgers.”
May declined The Independent’s request for comment.
Clarkson has previously hit out at the guitarist over his defence of badgers, tweeting a photo of a collapsed wall in 2013 with the words: “Dear Brian May out of Queen. Look what some b*****d badgers have done to my wall.”
In 2013, a year-long cull was introduced to allegedly help prevent the spread of bovine TB. The news was met with opposition, with a group of more than 30 animal disease experts calling it a “costly distraction”.
In 2015, one year after the cull ended, May led a funeral parade through London in honour of the badgers killed. Under UK law, it is illegal to kill or harm badgers.
Clarkson’s Farm series two arrives on Prime Video on 10 February, less than a month after reports claimed Amazon will “cut ties” with the presenter after the last of his commissioned shows are released.
It comes as a new Channel 5 documentary about Clarkson is released, which addresses the notorious incident in which the presenter punched Piers Morgan at a 2004 awards show.
