Jeremy Clarkson has admitted he didn’t do himself any favours trying to juggle running his farm with opening a new pub.
The motoring TV presenter-turned-farmer and publican, 65, took on quite the challenge in buying, renovating and opening The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire last year.
He has since said that in comparison, operating his new pub was “more stressful” than the daily running of Diddly Squat, his 400-hectare farm in the Cotswolds.
Viewers will get to see exactly what he means as cameras followed his every move for the upcoming fourth series of Clarkson’s Farm, his hit Prime Video show about his attempts to make the farm profitable.
The new series drops on the streamer on May 23 and speaking ahead of it, Clarkson said: “There are so many things that you discover about opening and running a pub that you wouldn’t even consider.
“When you and I go in a pub, you ask for a pint, you get a pint, you sit down, maybe have some pork scratchings or something, and it doesn’t look that difficult.
“But there’s an enormous amount of regulation on food hygiene and safety. And then you’ve got staffing. You’ve got to try and find chefs, you’ve got to find waitresses, and that’s all very complicated,” he added to PA.
His timing might have also added unnecessary extra pressure.
He explained: “I wanted to try and capture the August Bank Holiday Weekend, which meant that we were trying to open it at the exact same time as I was doing the harvest,” he said. “So I’d spend all day trying desperately to get the pub open and dealing with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of problems.
“Then you get home absolutely knackered, and you have to get into your tractor and do grain carting through the night. So it’s not really a secret [that] the stress was so bad.”
The pub’s first day of business wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, with would-be punters arriving to no lunch service.
In a teaser trailer, Clarkson can be heard lamenting: “Power cut. Fans are dead, no gas... lunch service is a bust, basically.”
