He has helped transform views of agriculture with his hit television show Clarkson’s Farm.
Could Jeremy Clarkson now be about to do the same for the beleaguered pub trade?
I ask because the petrolhead is said to be involved in negotiations about buying a tavern in the Cotswolds.
The former Top Gear presenter is understood to be interested in snapping up the Coach and Horses Inn, in Bourton-on-the-Water, a picture-postcard village in Gloucestershire.
The 18th Century, grade II-listed building is a stone’s throw from Hawkstone Brewery, where beer is produced using malted barley from his Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire.
Jeremy Clarkson is understood to be interested in snapping up the Coach and Horses Inn, in Bourton-on-the-Water, a picture-postcard village in Gloucestershire
The site is listed by Stonegate Pub Partners for a retail partnership tenancy and has a turnover forecast of £370,000 per year
The 18th Century, grade II-listed building is a stone’s throw from Hawkstone Brewery, where beer is produced using malted barley from his Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire
The site is listed by Stonegate Pub Partners for a retail partnership tenancy and has a turnover forecast of £370,000 per year.
The talks are believed to be ahead of submitting a formal planning application to Cotswold District Council.
A source claims Clarkson is interested in expanding the site and is having initial discussions about any highways implications his plans would have.
‘There’s stuff swirling around,’ another source says. ‘He owns Hawkstone Brewery just outside of Bourton and there is some discussion about planning applications with Cotswold District Council. He has been in talks about that, but it has not got to the stage of a planning application yet. It’s very early days.’
There have been a number of issues with the local council over traffic and development at his Diddly Squat Farm Shop in Chadlington.
He named it Diddly Squat because ‘that’s how much you make from farming’. Yet the motormouth turned it into a million-pound business.
Since Amazon Prime started broadcasting Clarkson’s Farm, about his efforts at Diddly Squat, the shop has become hugely popular with visiting fans, but less so with some neighbours who complain about the increase in traffic.
When I ring Clarkson about the pub plans, he’s unusually reticent, joking: ‘I’m now ‘in talks’ with my waiter about what to have for lunch…’
Jane steps into her cowgirl era
Beyonce, who’s at No 1 in the singles chart with Texas Hold’Em, is not the only star unleashing her inner cowgirl.
Jane Seymour dressed the part for the Country Music Television Award Show in Austin, Texas. The former Bond girl, 73, wore a lace dress from Alice + Olivia, paired with cowboy boots.
Jane Seymour dressed the part for the Country Music Television Award Show in Austin, Texas
Seymour presented singer Trisha Yearwood with the inaugural June Carter Cash Humanitarian Award. Yearwood made a guest appearance on TV series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, in which Seymour played the title role.
‘I got into country music through Dr Quinn, because they all came and guest starred including June Carter Cash and Johnny Carter Cash,’ Seymour says.
Dan Stevens, who has moved successfully from Downton Abbey to Hollywood blockbusters, is amused by the desperation of some of his fellow actors to succeed Daniel Craig as James Bond.
‘You can see certain people who have made certain career choices that are leaning that way, in that they’re putting out the stall and being like, ‘Hey! What do you think about this? I’ll look pretty good in a tuxedo, huh?’,’ he said.
‘It’s a strange phenomenon that it’s become the thing that must be achieved. There’s so much else out there that you can get your teeth into.’
Pitch a tent a Pippa’s pad
Fancy camping with the Princess of Wales’s sister? Pippa Middleton’s husband, the hedge-fund boss James Matthews, is offering ‘staycations’ in ‘magical glamping tents’ at his Bucklebury Farm and deer safari park in Berkshire.
Pippa Middleton’s husband, the hedge-fund boss James Matthews, is offering ‘staycations’ in ‘magical glamping tents’ at his Bucklebury Farm and deer safari park in Berkshire
‘Our tents, filled with luxury and charm, offer a blissful escape from everyday life,’ it promises, offering guests ‘a rejuvenating digital detox with no electricity or Wi-Fi’.
Two nights at the 77-acre farm, which Matthews bought in 2020 for £1.5million, costs campers at least £300 per tent.
Joely Richardson, who was married to Hollywood producer Tim Bevan and whose other exes include TV presenter Jamie Theakston and fellow thespian Sir Kenneth Branagh, says it’s her close female friends who have ‘carried’ her through life.
‘I’m a woman’s woman,’ declares the actress, 59. ‘I love men as well, but I have always known that it was my friendships that would carry me through. I’ve never been one who dumps their friends because they’ve got a relationship.’
Joely Richardson says it’s her close female friends who have ‘carried’ her through life
Jamie Oliver has cooked up plans to turn a barn into a garage at his £6 million Essex mansion – but he will have to make way for hedgehogs.
The chef, 48, has applied for a ‘change of use’ of the outbuilding at his ten-bedroom, Grade II-listed country pile, from ‘farm’ to ‘commercial and domestic’.
But he has been urged to keep gaps in his fence as a ‘hedgehog highway’ so the animals can carry on their daily mile-long forage for food, and to build a hedgehog nesting box and bee hives to boost biodiversity.
Planners are expected to make a decision this month.
Jamie Oliver has cooked up plans to turn a barn into a garage at his £6 million Essex mansion – but he will have to make way for hedgehogs
Meredith ties the knot with her ‘Viking’
After splitting up with her long-term boyfriend, Duran Duran keyboard player Nick Rhodes, she went on to portray their break-up by daubing her bare body in paint and rolling around on canvas.
Now, actress and artist Meredith Ostrom has found love with a Scandinavian financier she calls ‘The Viking’.
Now, actress and artist Meredith Ostrom has found love with a Scandinavian financier she calls ‘The Viking’, Kristian Lokka
Meredith, one of the Santa-outfit-wearing models with Bill Nighy in Love Actually, shared this wedding snap
Ms Ostrom, 47, has married Kristian Lokka, 45, in 800-year-old Ringebu Stave church in his native Norway.
Meredith, one of the Santa-outfit-wearing models with Bill Nighy in Love Actually, shared this wedding snap – a conventional choice considering her usual, naked artistic technique!
Chryssie, Lady Cobbold, who died on Sunday aged 83, will no doubt have a lively send-off.
When her husband Lord Cobbold died in 2022, Chryssie ordered a coffin inscribed with the artwork from his favourite album, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon.
A memorial bench on their family estate, the rock venue Knebworth, reads: ‘See you on the Dark Side of The Moon’.
The coffin was driven in a Land Rover, with speakers blasting out the album, through Knebworth village before the burial.