TV and celebrity chef Tom Kerridge has warned Jeremy Clarkson about the 'difficulties' of running a pub after he shelled out on a 'village boozer' near his Oxfordshire farm.

Kerridge, who owns The Hand and Flowers in Marlow in Buckinghamshire - the first pub to be awarded two Michelin stars - said it would be a "very difficult" venture for the Clarkson's Farm star.

Clarkson revealed at the weekend that he paid "less than £1 million" for The Windmill, which is set in five acres of countryside near Burford.

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He will sell his own Hawkstone lager and produce reared on his nearby Diddly Squat Farm at the site.

Kerridge also told ITV's Good Morning Britain that he hopes Clarkson will highlight the challenges faced by the hospitality industry in the same way he did with farming when he launched his reality TV show.

The chef said: "It's very, very difficult operating a pub. Even if it's busy and packed on a Saturday night, the profit margin is very, very small, particularly when you're a (drink-led) pub.

“You need to be busy on Monday and Tuesday lunchtime, not just a weekend, and the pressures that come into that business are absolutely huge.

“Revenues look like they may be busy, you turn up on a Sunday lunch and it is packed, that doesn’t necessarily mean to say it’s making money.

“It’s going to be very difficult. I’m very pleased that Jeremy’s taken that on because what he did for British farming, he showed actually how difficult it was and how hard it was to make it work.

“This will be another opportunity for us and the rest of the UK to see how difficult is it to run a pub because he will come up against the issues and the problems that there are and talk about it and use his voice for good reason.”Kerridge has also called for a cut in VAT for hospitality to help those struggling in the industry, following the temporary cut during the Covid pandemic.

 

He said: “That made a huge difference for the hospitality industry, that was the key to survival and it was massive.

“There are thousands and thousands of restaurants shutting every single year, and pubs, the hospitality industry is really under pressure.

“A 10 per cent reduction in VAT would be the sort of thing that would make the difference between survival and closure.”

Clarkson told The Times that everything served inside his new pub will be "UK grown to support local farmers".

He added: “Owning a pub these days is even more daft than owning a farm. What’s next? You buying a cinema?

“But there’s something inside a man that causes him to think, when he has the means, it’d be nice to buy the village boozer.

“Obviously, I couldn’t buy my village boozer. The locals would set fire to me if I did that. But the idea wouldn’t go away.”

The Windmill is not expected to open until later this year after refurbishment and repair work is completed.