Farm shop spat puts Mr Motormouth into a spin
HE is worth £50 million and has a multitude of adoring fans all over the globe. But the irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t get everything his own way — even at Diddly squat, his 1,000-acre Cotswolds farm.
Earlier this year, Clarkson opened a farm shop, squat shop, only for its makeshift car park to turn into a quagmire as locals roared in to snap up water labelled ‘it’s got no s**t in it’, and potatoes which, Clarkson promised, were cheaper than Aldi’s.
Now he’s snarled up in a spat with Chadlington Parish Council, which accuses him of flouting planning regulations and coronavirus guidelines.
‘Conditions of the original planning application have not been adhered to,’ allege the councillors in a letter to the planning authorities.
‘it clearly states that goods retailed from the farm shop shall be solely limited to goods and produce grown, reared and produced on the holding or from local producers based solely within West Oxfordshire District Council boundaries, and this has not been the case. Despite assurances to the local shops in the village that there would be no direct competition, this is not happening.’
Nor is the council appreciative of a ‘pop-up’ cafe which briefly appeared at Diddly squat, as the straw bales used for seating were covered with ‘fabric throws’, which were ‘against Covid-19 regulations’.
it concludes by making allegations concerning the filming of Clarkson’s forthcoming Amazon Prime series, i Bought The Farm.
LARGE numbers of cars have been parked haphazardly along that piece of road when filming takes place, causing problems and an accident waiting to happen,’ claim the Chadlington councillors.
Clarkson, 60, gives a characteristically full-throttle response. ‘No cars are ever parked on the road as there is a large car park,’ he tells me, before explaining that ‘pretty much all’ the food and drink on sale comes ‘either from my farm or from within a few miles of the shop’. But most important of all, he adds, is that ‘in a time of great economic uncertainty, that little shop now employs five people and buys from local producers who otherwise would be out of a job’.
Last month, motormouth Clarkson was forced to reapply for planning permission because his farm shop was built with the wrong type of roof.