Jeremy Clarkson has been forced to close his controversial restaurant at Diddly Squat farm after admitting defeat in his battle with the local council.
The 62-year-old Top Gear and Grand Tour presenter opened the restaurant last summer despite an ongoing planning row with West Oxfordshire District Council, which had denied his application to create a restaurant on the farm in late 2021.
Clarkson said he found a “delightful little loophole” allowing him to open a pizza cafe in July 2022.
Although it was on a different site to the original one, the following month he was issued an enforcement notice ordering him to shut down the popular eatery.
WODC claimed that the parking, toilets, traffic, as well as the dining installed by Clarkson’s farm is “visually intrusive and harmful” to the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
According to the Sunday Mirror, he is reported to have written to the council saying: “I no longer wish to open a restaurant” after being “thwarted by the enforcement notice”.
His farm in Chipping Norton attracts global visitors since becoming the subject of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime Video.
Locals are delighted that the plan for the restaurant appears to have been shelved, having complained about the heavy disruption and traffic jams, as well as the establishment not being in keeping with the quiet rural surroundings.
One said: “For too long he [Clarkson] has thought he can get away with whatever he wants without any consequences.”
Another added: “Rich and entitled. He has to follow the rules like everyone else and grizzles about not being treated differently.”
A second series of Clarkson’s Farm will be aired next month.
Clarkson’s representatives were contacted for comment.
