Love Island’s Will, Love In The Countryside and now Jeremy Clarkson; do we really just thirst for farmers?

If I was to tell you that Jeremy Clarkson was recently voted as the UK’s sexiest male, over the likes of Idris Elba and Henry Cavill, you wouldn’t believe me. But it’s true - he was voted as the sexiest UK male in a recent survey by dating website Illicit Encounters, who polled 2,000 males and females to determine who they think is the sexiest man in the UK.

That caveat, before Ryan Reynolds or Paul Rudd, decides to stop their training routine, is still pretty impressive given that Jeremy Clarkson at times can be a polarising figure, especially given the trouble he’s had with Diddly Squat Farm and the local council coupled with ‘that’ column he undertook about Meghan Markle. But it would seem the forthright nature of Clarkson is something women, and men, find attractive.

Or is it, as we discussed Friday afternoon at Peopleworld, something much more rooted in tradition? It comes as a surprise that Jeremy Clarkson earned the top spot, though beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, we argue none of this would have been possible without Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime Video - and the fact that there is somewhat of a history of farmers and rural folk being ‘thirsted’ over.

Don’t believe us? We would like to therefore draw your attention to exhibit A: Will Young, one of the Islanders on the latest season of ITV 2’s popular reality series Love Island. A popular contestant when he first entered the villa, the 23-year-old from Buckinghamshire has racked up more than one million followers and 32 million likes on the video-sharing platform with his farming content.

Posting under the nickname “Farmer Will”, Will shares videos on social media of his day-to-day life surrounded by animals on the farm he grew up on. All that fresh outdoor air and farming duties no doubt contributed to the physique we’ve thirsted over since his appearances on the show.

We would also be remiss to mention the reality television series, The Farmer Wants A Wife, that aired on ITV in 2001 before moving over to Channel 5 in 2009. The series, hosted initially by Catherine Gee and then by Louise Redknapp in the Channel 5 reboot, saw several farmers presented with women from the city, from whom they choose one to be their spouse. The success of the show saw many international spin-offs despite only lasting two seasons.

Is there a sense of Lady Chatterley’s Lover syndrome regarding the lust of farming types? The rugged, sensitive yet slightly stoic farmer that could tend to the needs of an upstanding male or female, who longs for a passion that might be seen elicit amongst some more elitist (nee: snobby) circles?

Maybe that’s something we could ask Prince Harry at his upcoming live-stream this weekend if we had a ticket to the event; he’s made it well known in his autobiography, Spare, that he once had a ‘rough and tumble’ when he was 17 outside "very busy pub" in the countryside.

May in that instance, it was a case of a reverse Lady Chatterley’s Lover - proving that even the rich and famous men in society still have a soft spot for the down-to-earth rural charms that female farmers also have to offer?