The outspoken media personality and TV star was speaking to The Times after Hawkstone’s sales almost tripled from £7.8m in 2024 to £21.3m in the year to this March.
The plan for the rest of 2025? “Sell tons of beer and put Peroni out of business,” Clarkson replies. “I want the Peroni board saying, ‘What the hell has gone wrong? We’re selling nothing in the UK.’ I want total domination of the British lager market.”
To cope with demand, Hawkstone works with partners such as the Glasgow-based Wellpark, home to Tennent’s and part of C&C Group, where its Hawkstone Premium lager is brewed.
Hawkstone is now available in 2,000 pubs, up from 500 last summer, and is also stocked in Waitrose, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Ocado and Majestic Wine.
Of the larger pub groups, Young’s is trialling it at 30 of its pubs: Simon Dodd, the chief executive, made a point of highlighting it as one of its most exciting new beers.
Clarkson also pondered the role of pubs in towns and villages, given the rate of attrition in recent years. “It’s been playing on my mind,” he says. “If you no longer have a village doctor, policeman, school, shop, vicar and if you lose the pub, then what is a village? It is just a collection of houses.”
He has a campaign in mind, and already has a slogan: “Go to your local pub on your way home from work.
“Just have a pint, a chat with someone. It is a bit less time scrolling on social media, a bit less time sitting with your non-communicative children. Go and have a pint. It is a sensible and nice thing to do. It benefits the individual, the pub. Even in London. If you come out of the Tube station, don’t go home. Stop off at the pub you walk past every night.”
Clarkson tackles the perception that he’s really only lent his name to Hawkstone.
“Some people assume it is a Ryan Reynolds-backed, Kylie Minogue-backed liquid. There is a polite look on their faces and they think, I’ll take a swig and say ‘well done’, in a patronising way. But there is always this moment where they go, ‘Actually, that is f***ing good.’”
