‘The goat’s cheese panna cotta had jagged garlic crisps jutting out, like the plates on a stegosaurus’s back’

It is snug and serves good food – but is Jodie Kidd’s new country pub trying a bit hard?

THE DAY AFTER I went to The Half Moon, I happened to call my father. He asked what I’d been up to. I told him I’d been to a posh pub.

‘A posh pub?’ he said. ‘How can a pub be posh?’

Well, Dad. Let me tell you.

The Half Moon was bought six months ago by the English supermodel Jodie Kidd (great-granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook). It stands in a wellto-do village in West Sussex called Kirdford (average house price, according to Rightmove: £630,000). It’s decorated by countless pictures of huntsmen, stags, and a group of men in Barbours, wellingtons and flat caps, posing in front of a 4x4 in a muddy field. Above the fireplace hangs a pair of polo sticks. The waiting staff wear tweed jackets. Piled high around the pub are copies of Country Life, Horse & Hound, Shooting Times, The Field and, quite right too, The Daily Telegraph. I did manage to find one copy of the Guardian , but it was lying in a basket beside the woodburning stove, presumably for kindling. Grown adults could be overheard discussing someone called ‘Mummy’. The two black Labradors attempting to befriend everyone in the bar were named Rupert and Humphrey. And the waitress invited us to ‘enjoy your luncheon’.

Yes, luncheon. We’re not in Wetherspoons any more, Toto.

There is of course nowhere better to spend the days before Christmas than a country pub, and The Half Moon is