Most pub landlords deal with the occasional difficult customer quietly, maybe a stern word, maybe a request to leave. Jeremy Clarkson has a considerably more direct approach: if you criticise The Farmer’s Dog publicly, there’s a genuine chance you’ll find yourself permanently banned, and Clarkson will make absolutely sure everyone knows about it.
The latest example played out on X, when one user took issue with the pub’s pricing, specifically calling out the £24 price tag on a pie and vegetables as “a bit much.” A second person then piled on, adding commentary about British beef prices for good measure. Clarkson’s response arrived swiftly and without any attempt at diplomacy: “You are now banned from the pub.”
It’s genuinely not an isolated incident. A photo of The Farmer’s Dog’s actual “people who are banned” list previously circulated widely on social media, and the names on it are considerably more high-profile than your average disgruntled X user. Sitting at the very top of the list, as the first two people ever formally banned from Clarkson’s pub, are Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Clarkson’s own former Top Gear and Grand Tour co-star, James May.
It’s exactly the kind of detail that fits perfectly with Clarkson’s well-established public persona: fiercely protective of his own ventures, entirely unbothered by whose feelings might get hurt in the process, and clearly enjoying the theatre of publicly calling people out rather than handling disputes privately. Whether the ban on Starmer carries any genuine political undertone or is simply another extension of Clarkson’s long-running frustrations with government policy affecting farmers, it’s certainly generated exactly the kind of headlines and social media chatter Clarkson seems to relish.
The James May inclusion, meanwhile, reads as pure, good-natured trio banter, entirely consistent with the ongoing, decades-long pattern of Clarkson and May needling each other publicly at every opportunity, from disputes over Grand Tour reunion specials to competing claims about whose pub is actually better. Being formally “banned” from Clarkson’s establishment is, in that context, less an actual punishment and more just another chapter in a rivalry that’s clearly still going strong.
For genuine paying customers, the takeaway is fairly straightforward: The Farmer’s Dog welcomes visitors warmly, right up until the moment you publicly criticise it online, at which point Clarkson appears entirely willing to escalate a simple pricing complaint into a viral social media moment. It’s a genuinely fitting piece of theatre for a business Clarkson has been candid about running at a loss for the sake of principle, one that suggests he’s just as protective of the pub’s reputation as he is worried about its bottom line.
