JANE FRYER: Punters had queued outside Jeremy Clarkson’s new pub for hours… when suddenly the star, in dad jeans and a crumpled shirt, burst outside and shouted ‘We’re open!’ [Video]

When Jeremy Clarkson decided to buy a pub, he knew nothing about running one.

‘Still don’t!’ he says, waving a bottle of his own Hawkstone lager around as he addresses the crowds at the official opening of The Farmer’s Dog, his brand new all-British pub serving all-British produce – right down to expensive home-grown black peppercorns and Cornish tea. (But the British Prime Minister won’t be there. Sir Keir Starmer, apparently, is barred.)

‘I don’t understand business plans. And so many things. Yesterday we had a soft opening and someone managed to smash the lavatory door.’

But he did have some very strict criteria when he snapped up this sprawling pub, with a terrace and five acres, just off a roundabout on the A40 near Burford.

‘We needed a big car-park,’ he says. ‘Lots of parking and no little roads to get to it: no one to annoy.’

Which was a good thing, because by …