The Clarkson’s Farm presenter, 64, says he paid “less than £1 million” for The Windmill, near Burford, Oxfordshire, despite warnings from pals that it will be a “total disaster.”
Former Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson wants his bar to have “dogs and families round the fire” while serving all-British ingredients on the menu – with a ban on fruit machines and “confusing” toilet signs.
But he says it may be some time before he can enjoy a pint in his own pub as his doctor has ordered him to stay off the booze “for a while” as his liver is a “bit stiff.”
He plans to inject the same sense of “fun” into the alehouse as he did while sharing the ups and downs of farming in his popular Amazon series, Clarkson’s Farm.
Clarkson’s Farm returned to screens earlier this year for its third series which featured an array of heartache, belly laughs and farming updates at Diddly Squat Farm.
His last attempt at catering 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.
Clarkson 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.”
Clarkson says his pub will employ 80 people, but it may not open until later this year as extensive refurbishment work is being conducted.
He said: “It’s entirely possible that I won’t get the place mended and open until the icy hand of winter has descended, which means I’ll have 80 people to pay every week, a quagmire for a car park and no customers because – as I’ve been told time and again – people just don’t go to country pubs any more. I think there are good reasons for that.
“Fun is in short supply, and fun is what I want to put back. There will be bar billiards, there will be darts.
“And in the corner, there will be a table with my name on it. A place where I can go on a Sunday with my granddaughter for some gammon, egg and chips.
“Except for one small but annoying detail. I’ve just received word from my doctor that my liver is a bit stiff and that I really need to quit drinking for a while.”
Snapping up the pub ties together his ventures into farming and brewing, with his Hawkstone lager using barley grown at Diddly Squat.
Clarkson’s venture into the pub trade follows his former Top Gear colleague James May who co-owns The Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire.