James May has taken a swipe at Jeremy Clarkson’s rival pub, claiming that his own establishment is “better” than his competitors.
The Grand Tour stars previously fronted Top Gear together from 2003 to 2015, with May resigning in solidarity from the show alongside Richard Hammond after Clarkson was fired.
May and Clarkson have both ventured into hospitality in recent years with May opening The Royal Oak in Salisbury in 2021, while Clarkson’s Asthall pub, The Farmer’s Dog, opened last summer.
Clarkson, 64, has previously admitted he has struggled to make a profit from the business and has responded to backlash from punters who complained about him charging £5.50 for pints.
Speaking to Al Arabiya News host Tom Burges Watson, May shared his verdict on Clarkson’s pub, claiming: “Mine’s much better. I think that’s the main difference.”
“I haven’t actually been to Jeremy’s pub,” he admitted, per Metro. “I’ve met a few people who have. It sounds like, well, from what I can gather, he’s gone for a sort of mass throughput model.
“So he’s got hundreds of people queuing up to have his burger, whereas ours is a little bit more relaxed.”
May added: “It’s a village pub where people come. The food is great, we’ve got a fabulous chef and team of chefs. “So mine would feel more like, more like a regular English pub.
“It’s not old fashioned, it hasn’t got horse brass on the walls or any of that tweed stuff,” he specified. “There’s no Morris dancing. I won’t allow that. It is just a pub.”
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The Grand Tour star revealed that he has also been finding it “extremely difficult” to run a pub, even though the business is “successful”, admitting The Royal Oak has “just survived” rising costs.
Ahead of opening The Farmer’s Dog, Clarkson was warned about the high number of pub closures in the UK, how hard it would be to make money by having only a British food menu and finding staff post-Brexit. He believed “it’d all be fine”.
However, Clarkson later admitted in a column published in The Times was hit with a different reality. “It is galling to see how much effort is required to make so little money on the farm,” he said.
“It’s worse at the pub. The customers are coming. There’s no problem there. But turning their visits into a profit is nigh-on impossible.”
Last year, the presenter described the whole process of becoming a pub landlord as “terribly stressful” and said there are many inconveniences that “you don’t think about”.
