Jeremy Clarkson slams ‘fraud epidemic’ after £50k scam at his pub
Jeremy Clarkson confesses running a pub is harder than farming, and claims he’s “seriously thinking of banning people with food intolerances” after customers allegedly tried to swindle £50,000.
The Top Gear presenter has spent decades building a brand on maverick marketing and bold statements. Last month, he returned with his anticipated annual Tweet reassuring students he scored two Cs and a U at A Level, yet was building a helicopter landing pad in his garden, and the month before, riled public interest with a “banned’ Hawkstone lager ad.
And most recently, Clarkson has announced that he’s considering barring “faddy eaters” from his pub, after punters allegedly tried to scam him out of £50,000.
In his column for The Times, the landlord attested that food intolerance scam is part of a “fraud epidemic” harming pubs, even joking that he’d considered banning those with food intolerances.
The 65-year-old said he’d been plagued by “food tolerance enthusiasts” who claimed to have been “poisoned” by his food and drink, before demanding him to cough up thousands of pounds.
Cash scams
He wrote: “We had one the other day who said she’d been given beer instead of cider and the gluten in it had made her so ill she’d had to cancel her holiday and we now had to reimburse her.
“Happily, we have her on CCTV not drinking beer, so we are safe on that one. But often landlords aren’t so lucky. Many tell me this food intolerance fraud is now an epidemic.”
Partner Content
The Asthall pub, formally known as the Windmill, is situated near Burford in Oxfordshire. The 65-year-old relaunched the boozer on 23 August 2024, and its expanded wine list showcases a fresh selection of English bottles from producers including Heretics, Balfour and Sugrue South Downs.
Writing for The Times, Clarkson also admitted that being a landlord is harder than being a farmer, adding, “we were hacked at the Farmer’s Dog last week and swindled out of £27,000.”
Horror stories from behind the bar
The Cotswolds local also listed a number of challenges his team had battled over the past year, including tax burdens, raucous punters and toilet issues.
He told several harrowing tales: “A lady came to my pub recently and after enjoying several glasses of our wonderful Hedgerow cider, had a stumble and then tripped over her hair extensions, which caused her to vomit explosively into her own cleavage … She fished handfuls of the sick from her bra and then passed it to our manager.”
He then added: “Or how about this one? A little girl in the garden became a bit upset because a little boy from the next table had nicked one of the pine cones she was using to build a castle. History doesn’t relate what happened next, but whatever it was, the two fathers decided that the only solution was to try to strangle each other.”
He feared, one day, after staff had checked out for the night, that “Rupert’s going to check the loos in his pub and find that someone has pebbledashed the walls with a gallon of diarrhoea.”
