Top beer Clarkson's new country pub pulls in the punters

Still reeling from the Covid lockdowns and soaring energy costs, barely a week passes without another pub announcing its closure.

- Jamie Grierson

Bucking the trend, just off the A40 between Burford and Witney in Oxfordshire, hundreds of punters were queueing outside the Farmer's Dog for an opening day that would be the envy of publicans across the country.

But the proprietor of the pub is no ordinary landlord, he is Jeremy Clarkson and his celebrity status brought hundreds of fans to queue through the six-acre beer garden with its sweeping views over the Windrush valley in the Cotswolds.

The pub is a lateral venture, with some of the produce grown on Diddly Squat Farm from his hit Amazon Prime show Clarkson's Farm, which has been lauded for highlighting the struggles faced by British farmers.

Under sunny skies, Clarkson, 64, burst out of the front door of the Cotswold stone pub at midday yesterday, threw his arms in the air and declared "we're open" to cheers from the waiting crowd.

"Every single thing you're going to consume in here was grown or reared by British farmers," he told them. "Apart from the quinine in the tonic, otherwise everything else is British.

"Help yourselves. Grab yourself a pint. Grab yourself some great food.

Enjoy yourselves. It's a nice day and there's no traffic chaos." Clarkson was alluding to fears from some residents of surrounding villages that the pub would attract large numbers of cars, an issue at the Diddly Squat Farm shop about 10 miles away near Chadlington.