Despite the closure of his Diddly Squat restaurant Jeremy Clarkson has announced plans to open a Cotswolds pub serving food made from all British ingredients.
Tom Kerridge has detailed the realities of running a gastro pub in the UK ahead of Jeremy Clarkson’s latest venture. The Clarkson’s Farm star, 64, paid “less than £1 million” for The Windmill, near Burford, Oxfordshire and has said he wants to have “dogs and families round the fire” while serving all-British ingredients on the menu.
During an appearance on Good Morning Britain, Tom, who runs the two Michelin-starred Hand and Flowers pub in Marlow, explained the realities of running such a venture. Advising that it wouldn’t be an easy undertaking he explained it is not all about the weekend custom.
“You need to be busy on a Monday and Tuesday lunchtime not just at weekends and the pressures that come into that business are absolutely huge,” he said. “I mean revenues – [a place] looks like they may be busy if you turn up on a Sunday lunch and it’s packed but that doesn’t necessarily mean to say it’s going to be making money. It’s very difficult.”
However, he is also delighted that Jeremy will be highlighting the realities of the business for the public. “Actually I’m very pleased that Jeremy is taking that on. Because what he did for British farming – he showed actually how difficult it was and how hard it was to make it work.
“This will be another opportunity for us and the rest of the UK to see just how difficult it is to run a pub because he will come up against the issues and the problems that there are and obviously talk about it and use his voice for good reason,” Tom opined.
Jeremy’s last foray into the catering industry was scuppered when council chiefs shut down a barn he’d converted into a restaurant on his 1,000-acre Diddly Squat farm, in nearby Chadlington, for breaching planning regulations.
He remains undeterred by that though and said: “I decided last year that I’d like to buy a pub.
“I dreamt, as many men have dreamt in the past, of chatting with the regulars about nothing of any consequence and then having a Sunday roast with my family at my own table.
“I had failed to get planning permission to turn a barn on my farm into a restaurant, but I still wanted somewhere where I could sell all that we make here. And my own beer in the taps too.”
