Jeremy Clarkson has admitted that his plans to open a restaurant in his former lambing shed “have gone down like a shower of sick with a few red-trouser people in my local village”.

The TV presenter referred to his Memorial Hall meeting with Chadlington village, saying: “It was a (mostly) polite battle between the red-tractor movement and the red trousers and I think I did quite well.”

Referencing diplomat and former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali he wrote: “Certainly they didn’t make a wicker man of me afterwards. Maybe that’s why some people call me Boutros Boutros-Clarkson.”

He admitted that his “next battle is with the planners” in his latest Sunday Times column.

And he put out a call for an old, experienced person to run his new restaurant.

He said: “I have all the ingredients I need for my new restaurant but no clue how they might be turned into stuff that people might want to put in their mouths.

“So is there anyone old out there who knows how to run such an establishment?”

The TV presenter, who is 61, said he knew lots of young driven people, including his daughter and “the 14-year-old kid in my local village who makes eco dog biscuits on his mum’s kitchen table” but rarely did he see an older person “charging round the place”.

“Which means there’s a vast and experienced pool of talent going to waste.”

He said: “Old people are very happy to sit about in their inconti-trousers, doing nothing all day, and then moaning about how young people are all too spoilt and entitled to get off their backsides.”