Watch: James May gave advice to Jeremy Clarkson about his pub
James May knows a thing or two about owning a pub so it’s understandable that Jeremy Clarkson asked for his advice before opening his own. May tells Yahoo UK that, while running a pub is hard work, if Clarkson can’t make it work then he’s a “f***wit”.
The TV presenter, who will next be seen in his Quest/Discovery+ series James May and the Dull Men, co-owns The Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe, which he jokes is more of a “very expensive way of going for a beer” than it is a lucrative venture. But he feels his Grand Tour co-star should have better luck with The Farmer’s Dog, because he is a “popular bloke”.
“He did ask me [for advice] and I said ‘don’t do it if you’re thinking of it as a business venture because you don’t make any money,'” May tells Yahoo UK. “I haven’t talked to him about it recently but I got the impression that he was having quite a bit of trouble and losing quite a bit of money, which is how it tends to go, certainly to begin with.
“But, I mean, he does have an advantage. He’s got a big pub and a big car park, we’re very strangled on our car park, and obviously he’s a very popular bloke and people are very interested to go and try his pub, so if he can’t make it work he’s a bit of a f***wit really.”
May co-owns The Royal Oak and has done so for four years, having helped save his local pub by buying into it after it was closed during the COVID pandemic. While he has a stake in the business, May admits he doesn’t “really run it” because he and his co-owner hired a manager to ensure it wouldn’t fail.
He explained: “Whenever amateurs buy pubs or villages buy pubs they generally fail, in fact The Royal Oak had failed a bit before we took it over. So, I don’t run it but I have ideas about it, most of which are ignored by the people who actually do run it because they know what they’re doing. It does sort of weigh on my mind a bit because I sometimes think, ‘Well, should I try and make this pub more like my pub?’
“I mean it’s a very nice pub and it does lovely food, and it’s got nice furniture and all that stuff, but I sometimes think ‘well, should it have more of me in it?’
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“The only bit of it that I really control is the art on the walls, because I don’t like really crappy pub, country art, type stuff, and I’ve got quite a few artist mates so I simply borrow pictures from them and put them up in in the pub. If people want to buy them they can, but they’re not evidently for sale, they don’t have price tags on because I always think that looks a bit grubby.
“So that’s really the only bit of the pub that I have any say in, the rest of the time I just go there and use it as a pub. It’s just a very expensive way of going for a beer to be honest.”
May added that his pub “makes enough money to look after itself” but it isn’t as lucrative a business venture as people might expect: “It’s never paid any sort of dividend, or anything like that, to me or Simon, the other guy. I think owning pubs is a bit like owning a nice artwork or a folly in your garden, it’s something you do for pleasure not for profit.”
James May and The Dull Men is launching on Quest and to stream on Discovery+ on Tuesday, 5 November at 9pm.
