TV star Jeremy Clarkson revealed "things are pretty terrible" as he shared "uncertainty" surrounding one of his businesses. After a long and distinguished career as a motoring journalist on Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Clarkson found a fresh audience with his hugely successful Amazon Prime series Clarkson's Farm.
In 2024 he opened a pub, a The Farmer's Dog, in Asthall, near Burford, Oxfordshire, to go alongside his Diddly Squat Farm, but he says the situation is "pretty bleak" for this part of his business empire.
Clarkson said he was worried about the rise in business rates as he echoed the thoughts of fellow celebrity and pub owner Tom Kerridge.
He wrote in the Sunday Times: "The chef Tom Kerridge said the rates on his burger joint in Marlow would go up from £50,000 a year to £124,000. 'What's the point in being open?' he asks reasonably. At my pub, the Farmer's Dog, things aren't quite that bleak but they're still pretty terrible.
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"The rateable value would shoot up from £27,250 to £55,000 and when you factor in the national insurance rise, which has upped our wage bill by £42,000 a year, we'd be up a gum tree.
"Because how can you pass this on to customers when they have a £2billion gas bill to pay and they can't get there anyway because of the new drink driving rules."
It comes after it was announced that Clarkson has won a car park planning battle at his pub, previously called The Windmill.
Permission to park at the site, which has 170 spaces, already existed. Many people visited the pub after it features on Clarkson's hit Amazon Prime series.
West Oxfordshire District Council said parking should be available off-road to discourage parking on the side of the A40, or on the road to Asthall.
Clarkson bought the pub for a cool £1million minutes after meeting the owner in 2023. It sits on five acres of land.
The TV star also declared that his medication is "eating" his muscles in a stark admission about his health, but admitted that he's unwilling to do what's necessary to "counteract this".
The former Top Gear host's admission came to light in a recent column in which he shared his thoughts on an "actual car", namely the new Mercedes-AMG CLE Coupé.
Clarkson decided to address the New Year and our apparent failure to stick to our resolutions, including the desire for "living clean", an approach to life that he says "simply isn't worth the effort".
He also touched upon his use of the weight loss jab Mounjaro and how he "absolutely must" perform a task - often associated with New Year's resolutions - to "counteract" a certain side effect.
The 65-year-old wrote in the Times: "The human being is a flawed design. We have the intellectual capacity to work out what is good for us, but most of us can't be bothered to do anything about it."