Jeremy Clarkson to drag off final ditch transfer to claw again income at pub after revealing its first few months have been a ‘whole catastrophe’

Jeremy Clarkson will be able to open his Cotswolds pub at 6am and keep it open for 20-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, to claw back profits after revealing its first few months have been a ‘total disaster’.

Unearthed licensing documents reveal for the first time today that the former Top Gear host inherited the generous opening hours from a former restaurant on the site of The Farmer’s Dog near Burford when he bought it earlier this year.

The extraordinary hours emerged hidden in small print from a planning application Clarkson made this summer to extend the area for alcohol sales outside onto the pub’s five-acre curtilage, build a new bar upstairs and set up a marquee in an adjoining field.

Hidden within a 20-page planning document is the revelation that the venue already has a licence for: ‘Supply by retail of alcohol’; ‘Premises opening hours’; ‘Live music’ and ‘Recorded music’ between the hours of ‘0600am and 0200am every day’.

West Oxfordshire District Council was asked by MailOnline to clarify the drinking and opening hours and whether they would continue with the new owners’ pub plans.

A source at the council planning department confirmed: ‘The pub already has a Premises Licence which allows them to trade from 0600hrs to 0200hrs. 

‘The application that has been submitted (on July 28th, 2024) is to vary the current licence with regards to the area that falls under the licence. 

‘They are seeking to extend the area to cover the outside area of the pub and to update the current building plans. There is no change to the times on the licence.’

The previous unusual drinking and trading hours were agreed because it is so far from any residential areas. 

The nearest houses are in a hamlet called Asthall almost a mile away to the north. 

It remains unclear why the unusual drinking hours were already in place at the previous venue – formerly The Windmill restaurant – but possible reasons might include that night shift workers at RAF Brize Norton, just a short distance away, used to use it to socialise after the end of a long night shift.

RAF Brize Norton is the UK’s largest military air base, home to 5,800 service personnel, 300 civilian staff and 1,200 contractors.

As the crow flies, the Farmer’s Dog is just 1.5 miles from RAF Brize Norton.

Clarkson will be able to call into play 20-hour-a-day drinking to claw back some of the profits he says he lost during the ‘total disaster’ of the first few months of trading, as revealed in a newspaper column of his at the weekend.

Clarkson wrote how his pub – run only on British produce – is a ‘total disaster’ behind the scenes as thefts, traffic chaos and toilet nightmares run rampant.

When the Farmer’s Dog first opened in Oxfordshire in August many had travelled from far and wide to the picturesque spot for a chance of a pint, with the car park rammed within an hour of its opening.

Despite pubs closing their doors up and down the UK, and amid warnings that his strict British products only policy would mean much smaller profit margins, the broadcaster steamed ahead. 

And although punters have flocked to his watering hole, Clarkson has recently revealed that being a publican isn’t at all what he imagined it to be, sharing that it required ‘much effort’ for ‘little money’ in return.

‘It’s galling to see how much effort is required to make so little money on the farm. It’s worse at the pub,’ he wrote in his most recent Times column.

‘The customers are coming. There’s no problem there. But turning their visits into a profit is nigh-on impossible.’

He divulged the myriad of issues he has faced as a pub owner, from 104 glasses going missing in a single day to spending £500 weekly on keeping the property and terrace warm.

However, his troubles don’t end there, as he shared that he was having to cough up £27,000 in fees for parking and traffic marshals to keep the local council on side. 

But the long list of problems only continue for Clarkson, who shared of the hellish toilet incident which required a ‘whole team’ of chemically trained hazmat engineers to tackle.

Recalling a recent occurrence, where one of employees called wailing on the phone after discovering a ‘horror’ bathroom ‘accident’, the presenter hired a team of specialist – a cost he had never envisioned listing on his business plans.

The farmer and his partner Lisa have also encountered some barriers in the run up to Christmas, with her Goose Night feast failing to sell out and only managing to shift five turkeys after ordering 40.

But despite the hurdles Clarkson is more determined than ever to make his pub work.

‘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.’

After being hit by huge costs, extended opening hours could be used by Clarkson to meet a spike in demand when the fourth series of Clarkson’s Farm starts in the Spring.

Filming of the upcoming hit Amazon Prime series has regularly focussed on life prior to and after the rocky August launch of the pub near Burford, in West Oxfordshire.

The last series of the show which aired in May, and focused entirely on farming, was the biggest show on Amazon Prime all year and resulted in a huge spike in fans visiting the Diddly Squat farm shop near Chadlington where it was filmed.

Much of Clarkson’s interest since then has switched to the pub, 10 miles from the farm. In the pub’s grounds, in a colossal marquee, it also has a second larger farm shop, butcher and also an off licence for Clarkson’s own beer brand Hawkstone.

The fanfare pub opening in August saw fans queue for hours from 7am for the midday opening. It has been fully booked up throughout the summer.

And while initial long pub queues have now died down, the interest is set to spike when new series begins in May. 

That will also coincide with tourists flooding to the picturesque Cotswolds which they do annually between Spring and Autumn next year.

Amazon Prime film crews have been at the pub throughout the summer. 

They have captured the frayed tempers as Clarkson and his pub crew struggled to open on time, the various problems of the opening day which Clarkson himself described as a ‘sh** show’, and all the problems associated with the day-to-day running of a pub in the UK’s beleaguered hospitality industry.

Crowds are predicted to surge at the pub with the new series in the Spring.

When The Farmer’s Dog opened in August, huge initial interest was catered for with Clarkson renting a local landowner’s field to make an overflow carpark.

The landowners, Patricia and Edward Walker said at the time: ‘We were told this week would be very busy for a little while, and that things might die down for a while. 

‘Then when the new programme (Clarkson’s Farm 4) comes out next Spring it’ll probably boost up again. These things come and go and people lose interest in the end don’t they.’

The popularity of the first Diddly Squat Farm Shop in nearby Chadlington (the Farmer’s Dog opened the second one on the pub site in August) has been enormous.

Fans of Amazon Prime’s hit series Clarkson’s Farm make pilgrimages from around the world to get there, often queuing for three hours just to buy merchandise, beer and cider, and farm produce from what remains just a very small basic shop in a field.

It has been so popular at Chadlington that the narrow rural roads around it quickly became gridlocked, and Clarkson had numerous run-ins with council planners over turning the surrounding fields there into overflow carparks to stop drivers abandoning their cars haphazardly on roadsides for miles around. 

Currently the Chadlington farm shop still attracts long queues every day with one carpark and two overflow car parks in surrounding fields. Still drivers can’t fit in the car parks and from time to time park on the roadside verges for hundreds of meters in every direction.

At The Farmer’s Dog on its first day in August, the first customers arrived at 720am – almost five hours before the pub actually opened. 

The pub’s own car park was full a little over an hour later. And by the time the pub actually opened shortly after 12 noon, between a third and a half of the 34-acre overflow car park appeared to be full.

It is impossible to tell whether The Farmer’s Dog will keep growing in popularity or not. 

But it is predicted to experience a further upsurge when series four of Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm airs next Spring. 

If the amount of Amazon camera crew members swarming around the pub during its renovation and opening are anything to go by, the pub will feature heavily in series four.

It is reasonable to suppose the new pub will become one of the Cotswolds’ biggest tourist attractions. 

That part of Britain already famously has its pretty villages overrun by tourist coaches carrying visitors from around the world throughout the year. 

The Cotswolds are one of England’s most-visited landscapes attracting an estimated 38 million visitors per year. It is largely seasonal, with tourists flooding in most often between April and September.