26th March, 2013
by
Lucy Shaw
Film director Guy Ritchie has called time on his career as a landlord by selling his Mayfair pub, The Punch Bowl, to Cirrus Inns.
Guy Ritchie and fiancée Jacqui Ainsley
Owned by Alexander Langlands Pearse and Mark Askew – former executive head chef at Gordon Ramsay Holdings – Cirrus Inns, which formed in 2011, boasts 12 pubs in its portfolio across London, Berkshire, Somerset, Dorset and Sussex.
Hertfordshire-born Ritchie snapped up the 300-year-old pub in London’s affluent Mayfair district in February 2008, and it quickly became a celebrity haunt frequented by the likes of David Beckham, Kevin Spacey, Robert Downey Jr and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Ritchie and his then wife Madonna bought the Georgian pub on Farm Street for a reported £2.5m from Greg Foreman, son of gangster Freddie Foreman.
Footballer David Beckham leaving The Punch Bowl
The couple, who lived nearby, divorced in 2008 but Ritchie kept the pub as part of the settlement and continued to socialise there with his actor friends.
According to the Evening Standard, it was a tough decision for the 44-year-old Sherlock Holmes director and his business partner Piers Adam to sell the pub.
“They were determined that the new people wouldn’t change its DNA,” a friend of the pair told the Standard.
In 2008, The Punch Bowl was investigated for alleged trading breaches and was cleared of charging tourists higher prices than regulars for food and drinks.
The pub famously offered fish and chips for two and a half bottle of Krug for £75.
Ritchie is best known for directing 1998 British heist film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels starring Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham, following up with crime comedy Snatch in 2000, starring Brad Pitt and Benicio del Toro.
He is engaged to English model Jacqui Ainsley, with whom he has a son and a daughter.