TV chef Tom Kerridge has confessed he’s all for Jeremy Clarkson buying a Oxfordshire pub as his latest project.
The Clarkson’s Farm star revealed on Sunday (30th June) that he purchased The Windmill near Burford in Oxfordshire for “less than £1 million”. He said in his Sunday Times column that despite warnings from friends, pub life is the next challenge he wants to take on after his farm-owning journey.
“As one friend put it: ‘Owning a pub these days is even more daft than owning a farm,’” the TV star jokingly quotes in his article. “But there’s something inside a man that causes him to think, when he has the means, it’d be nice to buy the village boozer.”
The former Top Gear host plans to sell his Clarkson’s Farm produce at the pub, plus put his own beer on draught there as well.
Kerridge, who owns The Hand and Flowers in Buckinghamshire; the first pub with two Michelin stars, said it is “going to be very difficult” for Clarkson to open his new venture, but hopes Clarkson will highlight the challenges that the hospitality industry’s faces, in the same way he did with farming when he bought the Cotswolds land and started his reality show.
The cookbook author told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “It’s very, very difficult operating a pub. Even if it’s busy and packed on a Saturday night, the profit margin is very, very small, particularly when you’re a wet-led (drink-led) pubs.
“You need to be busy on Monday and Tuesday lunchtime, not just a weekend, and the pressures that come into that business are absolutely huge. Revenues look like they may be busy, you turn up on a Sunday lunch and it is packed, that doesn’t necessarily mean to say it’s making money.”
He continued: “I’m very pleased that Jeremy’s taken 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 how difficult it is to run a pub because he will come up against the issues and the problems that there are and talk about it and use his voice for good reason.”
It comes after Clarkson helped to overturn a rule that stopped him from opening his Diddly Squat restaurant.
Back in May, the government introduced new planning laws, dubbed the ‘Clarkson’s Clause’, with the idea of slashing the red tape that farmers often face when it comes to converting unused farm buildings.
Farmers will now be able to change those unused buildings into new homes and shops without having to apply for planning permission first, in a bid to “diversify and grow” businesses “without having to spend time and money on submitting a planning application.
The change in policy comes after Clarkson battled against West Oxfordshire District Council on Clarkson’s Farm in 2022 after they shut down his Diddly Squat Farm restaurant when it was opened without planning permission.
Clarkson’s Farm returned for series three on Prime Video earlier this year, and The Grand Tour host insisted those council arguments and planning battles are what make the agricultural series “genuine reality television.”
Speaking during a Q+A with virginradio.co.uk and other press, Jeremy explained: “It’s not hosted by somebody in purple spectacles with a zany jacket, it’s absolutely real. What you see actually happens, and none of it is planned.
Contrasting it to the glossy production of driving travel series The Grand Tour where “everything was planned”, the broadcaster elaborated: “Nothing is planned on this, I have no script. Every single day when we meet to do filming, every day we’ll have a vague idea of what we need to do.”
