The former Top Gear co-host and pub owner appeared on LBC radio following Prince William’s recent visit to a south-east London pub.
The royal visited the Prince of Peckham earlier this week (Wednesday 3 June) and praised the role pubs play in supporting local communities and tackling loneliness.
LBC radio host Nick Ferrari highlighted closures figures from recent years, stating in 2000 there were 60,000 pubs, dropping to 50,000 in 2015 compared to the 44,000 currently.
May, who is the co-owner of the Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire, was asked what the key for running a successful pub was.
He outlined how his pub had become “quite successful in recent months”, saying the answer was “pretty simple. It’s cheerful staff, a nice range of drinks, decent food, (food is important), clean lavatories, somewhere to park the car in the case of the countryside, it’s a fairly simple formula”.
“I get very conflicted about all the ‘save the pub’ stuff that goes on. It’s great Prince William says he likes pubs, that’s got to help but the honest truth is, if things need protecting, they’re not doing themselves any favours.”
Quality issue
He added: “Pubs are not actually institutions, they’re not historical monuments or any of that stuff, they are essentially businesses first and foremost but beyond that, they’re places that have to work.
“The pub will be saved by the pub, nothing else. It would be nice if we could have lower rates and lower duties and so on but that’s not really the issue. The issue is the quality of pubs themselves.”
May previously appeared on The Morning Advertiser‘s Lock In podcast in 2024 where he outlined why he bought the pub, which was closing in the village near him.
At the time, he said: “It occurred to me if that pub disappeared, there wouldn’t be a pub within walking distance and life would become meaningless.”
Furthermore, he urged others not to take on a pub for business reasons. The celebrity added: “It’s extremely hard work, it’s almost impossible to make a pub breakeven, let alone be profitable. When I hear people say they are going to buy a pub, I think please, find another way to get rid of your money.
“You shouldn’t go near anything like that as a business proposition - it isn’t. “They’re almost charitable institutions, I sometimes wonder if they shouldn’t be made charitable institutions.”
On LBC, he echoed the reasons for taking the pub on and admitted he isn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the business.
“Definitely not to make money because I think that’s a bit of a fool’s errand with pubs. You have to see them more as follies or indulgences,” May said.
“It’s a little bit of an old man’s fantasy, the idea of owning a pub. Everybody secretly thinks they’d like to do it and they’d be good at it. It’s actually extremely hard work.
“I don’t run it of course, I simply own it. We have professionals who are doing the managing, the serving, the cooking and so on.
“It is a folly but it does give me a fabulously warm feeling because I can wake up in the morning and think I’ve done what millions of people would secretly like to do, I own a pub, it’s great.”
Natural cull
May previously described the country as “oversubscribed” with pubs during an interview with The Morning Advertiser in 2024.
He echoed these comments during the discussion with Ferrari about current closure figures.
He said: “There had to be a bit of a natural cull. In the past there were many thousands of pubs, in some places of Britain there were two on every street but we don’t need as many as we did.
“They’re not a refuge for single working blokes who can’t feed themselves any more, that’s largely disappeared so they’re more social and dining spaces, they’re more of an event, going to the pub [now].
“There is room for a few old-style boozers, the death of which everybody laments, they talk about sawdust on the floor, one type of beer and a pickled onion type stuff but I suspect most people don’t want that and we simply don’t need as many pubs as we once had.
“The honest truth is, the good ones survive and the bad ones will fade away.”
