The Hawkstone Farmers Choir has sung its way into the Britain’s Got Talent final, winning its semi-final on ITV and moving within reach of the £250,000 prize. The 34-strong group of real British agricultural workers, including Ben Brooke, will now perform again in Saturday’s final on May 30.
Brooke, who lives in West Bilney and works on his family’s 2,500-acre arable business, said the choir is trying to draw attention to the loneliness and mental strain that can come with farming. He has described agriculture as a super isolating profession, with long days alone in a tractor and little regular contact with other people.
The search interest around farmers choir bgt has grown because the group is not just another novelty act. It first formed as part of an advertising campaign for Jeremy Clarkson’s Cotswolds-based brewing firm, but on stage it has presented itself as a chorus of working farmers trying to push mental health and suicide prevention into the national conversation. That mix of commercial origin and genuine cause has helped make it one of the most talked-about acts in the competition.
The choir earned Amanda Holden’s golden buzzer with its audition performance of Elbow’s One Day Like This, then followed up in the semi-final with Bastille’s Pompeii. After that performance, it secured a place in the final and climbed to second-favourite to win, behind spoken word poet Sonny Green. If it goes all the way, the group has pledged to direct a major portion of the £250,000 prize to agricultural mental health charities.
Brooke said he had never been in a school choir and had never sung by himself before joining in, adding that he only started because his daughter loves singing and dancing. That detail has become part of the appeal: a fourth-generation farmer from DH Deptford Farms near March in Cambridgeshire, singing on prime-time television for a cause that many in the industry say has too often been left out of view.
The final on ITV on Saturday will decide whether that message reaches a bigger audience with a trophy attached. For the farmers on stage, the next step is simple enough: one more performance, one more chance, and one more test of whether a campaign-born choir can turn a television moment into lasting help for the people it says it represents.
