Jeremy Clarkson's pub 'swindled' out of £27,000 by hackers
Jeremy Clarkson has revealed his Cotswolds pub - featured in his Amazon Prime show Clarkson's Farm - was "swindled" out of £27,000 by hackers.
Jeremy Clarkson's pub has been "swindled" out of £27,000 by hackers.
The former Top Gear star opened The Farmer's Dog in the Cotswolds last year and featured the struggle to get the venture off the ground in his Amazon Prime series Clarkson's Farm - but Clarkson has now revealed the venue has been plagued by problems including the loss of thousands of pounds to internet fraudsters.
In his column for The Sunday Times newspaper, he wrote: "We were hacked at the Farmer’s Dog last week and swindled out of £27,000."
Clarkson used the column to discuss the various problems his team at the pub have encountered over the last year including rowdy customers, toilet problems and taxes on publicans declaring running a pub is "harder than anything. Even farming."
He wrote: "A lady came to my pub recently and after enjoying several glasses of our wonderful Hedgerow cider, had a stumble and then tripped over her hair extensions, which caused her to vomit explosively into her own cleavage ... She fished handfuls of the sick from her bra and then passed it to our manageress."
He then added: "Or how about this one? A little girl in the garden became a bit upset because a little boy from the next table had nicked one of the pine cones she was using to build a castle.
"History doesn’t relate what happened next, but whatever it was, the two fathers decided that the only solution was to try to strangle each other."
Clarkson told the tale of another child who accidentally locked herself in a toilet stall so other customers grabbed a crowbar and hacked the door from its hinges and another incident in which a woman claimed to have been given beer instead of cider and the gluten in the drink "made her so ill she had to cancel her holiday".
He went on to say: "[She wanted us to] reimburse her. Happily, we have her on CCTV not drinking beer, so we are safe on that one. But often landlords aren’t so lucky.
"Many tell me this food intolerance fraud is now an epidemic."
He also accused some customers of failing to use the bathrooms properly and leaving the walls "pebbledashed" with "a gallon of diarrhoea" and another man who allegedly films himself urinating on the floor of pubs and posts the videos on social media.
Clarkson added of the man: "I’d actually like to catch this guy as I’d very much like to kill him."
The TV star went on to list annoyances including the theft of cooking oil from the pub's kitchen and issues with building inspectors demanding he install new fire escapes at the cost of around £1 million.
He concluded: "This is why one pub in the UK is closing every single day at the moment. It’s hard enough dealing with all of the vomit and the faeces and the fights, but when you factor in the local authority, and taxation, and the government’s exciting new laws on workers’ rights, it becomes nigh-on impossible to stay sane."
