Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that his Clarkson’s Farm co-star Kaleb Cooper kicked a customer out of his new pub, The Farmer’s Dog, on opening day
Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that his co-star Kaleb Cooper threw a customer out of his pub, The Farmer’s Dog, on opening day after asking him one question.
Viewers have delighted in watching Clarkson and Kaleb face up to the many challenges of running Diddly Squat Farm on his popular Amazon Prime show.
However, in 2024, the former The Grand Tour host decided to open a new pub close to his Oxfordshire farm. Writing in his new book, Diddly Squat: The Farmer’s Dog, the 65-year-old revealed that the pub faced a rocky start even before its grand opening.
Clarkson revealed that the final preparations were plagued by delays, bureaucracy and costly hiccups. From debating whether to install a defibrillator behind the bar to wrestling with fire safety regulations for a chromed vintage tractor meant to hang from the ceiling, Clarkson admitted the process was riddled with unexpected complications.
When The Farmer’s Dog finally opened, Clarkson had devised a unique twist — an upstairs bar reserved exclusively for farmers. “Only farmers would be allowed in here,” he said. “Many had asked how we’d be able to tell. Ha. Because you just can.”
However, that rule was soon put to the test. During the soft opening, a man who looked the part wandered upstairs. “His wardrobe was pretty convincing,” Clarkson wrote. “But his shoes were wrong.”
Clarkson decided to quiz him. “I asked him, ‘What’s glyphosate?’ He said, ‘Weedkiller,’ and I let him past. But Kaleb still wasn’t convinced.”
Kaleb, never one to mince words, put the supposed farmer to the test with one final question: “How many acres are there in a hectare?”
When the man hesitated and guessed, “Er… twelve?”, Kaleb didn’t hesitate. “‘Out,’ Kaleb ordered.”
The unfortunate guest wasn’t the only casualty that day — Clarkson added that soon after, “the water had run out, the power was on the blink again and cooking had stopped. It was our opening day and it wasn’t an opening day at all.”
Things have since improved, but Clarkson warned future visitors to temper expectations. “Your lunch, if it arrives at all, is costing us a lot more than it’s costing you. So please be kind.”
The pub, formerly known as The Windmill, is located in Asthall, near Burford in Oxfordshire, and was reopened by Clarkson on August 23, 2024.
Clarkson sells his own Hawkstone lager in the venue and wanted to have all of the produce sold there grown or reared by British farmers.
In a post to the pub’s website, he said that ingredients like quinine in tonic water cannot be grown in Britain but emphasised that they are “doing all we possibly can to support British farming”.
