Writing for The Sunday Times last week, the TV presenter turned pub-owner said his pub, the Farmer’s Dog in Burford, Oxfordshire, had been “hacked”.
Clarkson did not share details on how the pub, which he opened in August 2024, had been targeted but that the business had been “swindled” out of £27,000.
The former Top Gear host also shared advice for actor Rupert Everett, who was last week pictured pulling pints at his local pub in Wiltshire in a bid to help save the venue.
Clarkson wrote: “I wish them all the very best, of course. But I’ve had a pub for a year now and I feel duty-bound to point out that behind the bucolic thatched, ‘pint of Best’ image that undoubtedly lives in Rupert’s head, running a pub is harder than eating [in] one. It’s harder than anything. Even farming.”
Cost pressures
The Who Wants to be a Millionaire host went on to describe several unpleasant “isolated” incidents at the pub, including a woman vomiting down herself and handing it to the manageress after one too many pints of cider and a fight between two fathers after an argument between their children.
He also talked about issues with the pub’s toilets, querying how so many customers can miss the target: “I don’t know the answer because we don’t have CCTV in the cubicles but I do know that one day, after all the staff have left for the night, Rupert’s going to check the loos in his pub and find that someone has pebbledashed the walls with a gallon of diarrhoea”.
In addition, the television presenter and journalist spoke about the challenges around managing food allergies and customers targeting pubs in a “food intolerance fraud epidemic”, adding he would “ban” people with food allergies if it wouldn’t be “commercial suicide”.
Clarkson, who also runs the Diddly Squat Farm in Chipping Norton and Hawkstone Brewery, also praised the resilience of his staff but raised issues with finding the right employees on top of cost pressures across the board.
He continued: “This is why one pub in the UK is closing every single day at the moment. It’s hard enough dealing with all of the vomit and faeces and the fights, but when you factor in the local authority, taxation and the Government’s exciting new laws on workers’ rights, it becomes nigh-on impossible to stay sane.”
Rural perfection
Despite this, Clarkson also highlighted the positive side of running a pub: “Of course, there are good days. On a visit [to the Farmer’s Dog] last week I sat in the garden, in the sunshine, with a pint of my own beer, chowing down on a pizza made with dough from my own farm, and it was rural perfection.
“There was a gaggle of little kids doing handstands and dogs lazing in the warmth and families enjoying the live band that serenades the customers on a Friday evening. I was bathed in a Ready Brek glow of absolute happiness.”
In a bid to support pubs, Clarkson recently announced the Hawkstone Farmer’s Choir would create a song for each venue serving Hawkstone beer and cider.
The initiative was first launched in July with a ‘banned’ TV ad, which featured Clarkson drinking a Hawkstone beer and exclaiming ‘it’s f*****g good’, alongside the choir, which is made up of real British farmers, singing using expletive language to the music of Flower Duet.
Using AI, the choirs’ songs that feature in the advert can be personalised for individual pubs.
