'There was so much rain we couldn't do much farming'

We hear from Jeremy Clarkson and Kaleb Cooper about opening a pub, a disastrous harvest, and lots of rain in Clarkson's Farm series four

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Across three series of Clarkson's Farm, former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson has shown the world just how difficult it is to run a farm.

Yet, instead of making his next Diddly Squat farm investment something that'll be a guaranteed win, he's opted to start another similarly-doomed business.

That's right: Clarkson's opened a pub.

“There are so many things that you discover about opening and running a pub that you wouldn't even consider,” says the 65-year-old motoring presenter.

“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.”

It can’t have been much of a surprise to Clarkson that running a pub-albeit one that fosters his ‘Farm to Fork’ beliefs, as does his infamous Farm Shop-wasn't going to be easy.

In 2024, the year in which Clarkson bought and opened The Farmer's Dog in Oxfordshire, more than 400 pubs called ‘last orders’ for the final time and shut their doors for good, citing rising costs and customers’ reduced spending power. Indeed, The Guardian reported in December 2024, that the number of pubs in England and Wales fell below 39,000 for the first time, with more than 34 pubs shutting every month on average.