‘I’ll lose a fortune’: Jeremy Clarkson reveals Farmer’s Dog pub is a disaster

Jeremy Clarkson has detailed why his newest business venture, a cozy pub in the British countryside, is struggling to stay afloat.

Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson seems to have bitten off more than he can chew with his latest business venture, the Farmer’s Dog pub which opened in Oxfordshire in England’s south earlier this year.

At its opening in August, hundreds of fans queued for more than four hours to be among the first customers to pair a pint of Clarkson’s Hawkstone lager with fresh produce sourced from his nearby farm.

But after four months of operation, Clarkson used his weekly column in The Sunday Times to bemoan the experience of being a British pub landlord.

“I’d heard of course that two pubs a day are closing in the UK and that 10,000 have gone since we all met up in the year 2000. And I’d been warned about the difficulty of making money if I stuck to a strict British-food-only policy,” he said.

Jeremy Clarkson had detailed the difficulties of running his newly opened pub in the Cotswolds. Picture: The Farmer’s Dog

“But all of this advice, along with stern warnings about theft and the difficulties of finding staff in a post-Brexit world, had gone in one ear and out of the other.”

In his column, Clarkson outlined the unexpected costs and unforeseen obstacles plaguing the profitability of his pub in the Cotswolds in England’s south-west, including a disturbing diarrhoea incident discovered on a routine patrol of the outside garden loos.

“No amount of festival visits would prepare you for the horror of what had been produced at the Farmer’s Dog,” he said. “It was everywhere and in such vast quantities that no ordinary plumbing or cleaning equipment would even scratch the surface.

“That’s a cost I’d never factored into any of my business plans.”

It did not stop there. Several other sunk costs were identified by Clarkson, the most sinister of which was the theft of the pub’s pint glasses.

Jeremy Clarkson has vowed to only serve British produce at the Farmer’s Dog. Picture Ellis O’Brien / Prime Video

“People seem to have it in their heads that if they come in for a pint they are entitled to go home with the glass in which it was served,” he said.

“Last Sunday, 104 went missing.”

He said these costs were only adding to his pain, with £100 ($200) a day spent on generator fuel, £400 ($800) a week to keep patrons sitting on the outdoor terrace warm, and £27,000 ($54,000) spent on parking and traffic marshals to “keep the council off our back.”

Since the launch of his hugely successful docuseries Clarkson’s Farm, the celeb has also been outspoken about the UK government’s treatment of farmers.

Speaking to the BBC, Clarkson said, “If I take one of our pigs and we slaughter it and butcher it and we turn it into sausages and we sell it here, it costs us 74p ($1.50). If I buy imported pig meat it is 18p (36c). So, something is wrong with the food system in this country.”

Clarkson recently joined farmers protesting Keir Starmer's proposed changes to inheritance tax laws. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

More recently he joined an estimated 15,000 farmers who took to the streets of London to protest against Keir Starmer’s inheritance tax changes, describing the government’s policy as “a knee in the nuts and a hammer blow to the back of the head.”

Despite the hardship, Clarkson maintains that patrons are largely shielded from troubles behind the scenes. “It’s warm and there’s a fire and the staff are friendly and young and happy. It’s a proper, traditional pub,” he said.

“By which I mean you’ll love it, and I’ll lose a fortune and develop a skin disease from the stress of running it.”