Is Jeremy Clarkson swapping Top Gear for Top Beer? The petrolhead turned farmer is said to be negotiating to buy a tavern in the Cotswolds, writes RICHARD EDEN

He helped transform the perception of agriculture with his hit television show Clarkson’s Farm.

Could Jeremy Clarkson now be about to do the same for the beleaguered pub trade?

I ask this because the car enthusiast is said to be involved in negotiations about the purchase of a tavern in the Cotswolds.

The former Top Gear presenter is said to be interested in taking over the Coach and Horses Inn, in Bourton-on-the-Water, a postcard village in Gloucestershire.

The 18th century Grade II listed building is a stone’s throw from Hawkstone Brewery, which produces beer using malted barley from its Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire.

The site is listed by Stonegate Pub Partners for a retail partner lease and has a turnover forecast of £370,000 per year.

The talks are believed to be in preparation for the submission of a formal planning application to Cotswold District Council.

A source claims that Clarkson is interested in expanding the site and is having initial discussions about any highways impact his plans would have.

“There’s a lot of stuff swirling around,” said another source. ‘He owns Hawkstone Brewery, just outside Bourton, and there is some discussion about planning applications with Cotswold District Council. He is discussing this, but the stage of a building application has not yet been reached. It’s still very early.’

There have been a number of issues with the council over traffic and development at his Diddly Squat Farm Shop in Chadlington.

He called it Diddly Squat because “that’s how much you make farming.” Yet the Motormouth turned it into a multi-million dollar business.

Since Amazon Prime began airing Clarkson’s Farm, about his efforts at Diddly Squat, the store has become wildly popular with visiting fans, but less so with some neighbors who complain about the increase in traffic.

When I call Clarkson about the pub plans, he is unusually reserved, joking: “I’m currently ‘talking’ to my waiter about what I’m having for lunch…”

Jane enters her cowgirl era

Beyonce, who reached number 1 in the singles chart with Texas Hold’Em, is not the only star to unleash her inner cowgirl.

Jane Seymour dressed in the role for the Country Music Television Award Show in Austin, Texas. The former Bond girl, 73, wore a lace dress from Alice + Olivia, paired with cowboy boots.

Seymour presented singer Trisha Yearwood with the first June Carter Cash Humanitarian Award. Yearwood made a guest appearance in the TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, in which Seymour played the title role.

‘I was introduced to country music through Dr. Quinn, because they all came and guest-starred, including June Carter Cash and Johnny Carter Cash,” Seymour says.

Dan Stevens, who has successfully moved from Downton Abbey to Hollywood blockbusters, is amused by the desperation of some of his fellow actors to succeed Daniel Craig as James Bond.

“You can see certain people who have made certain career choices that lean in that direction, in that they’re clearing out the closet and saying, ‘Hey! What do you think of this? I look pretty good in a tuxedo, don’t I?” he said.

“It’s a strange phenomenon that this has become something that needs to be achieved. There’s so much more you can sink your teeth into.’

Pitch a tent near Pippa’s path

Fancy camping with the sister of the Princess of Wales? Pippa Middleton’s husband, hedge fund boss James Matthews, is offering ‘staycations’ in ‘magical glamping tents’ at his Bucklebury Farm and deer safari park in Berkshire.

“Filled with luxury and charm, our tents offer a blissful escape from everyday life,” it promises, offering guests “a rejuvenating digital detox without electricity or Wi-Fi.”

Two nights on the 77-acre farm, which Matthews bought for £1.5 million in 2020, will cost campers at least £300 per tent.

Joely Richardson, who was married to Hollywood producer Tim Bevan and whose other exes include TV presenter Jamie Theakston and fellow stage actor Sir Kenneth Branagh, says it is her close friends who have ‘carried’ her through life.

“I am a woman’s wife,” declares the 59-year-old actress. ‘I love men too, but I always knew it was my friendships that would get me through. I’ve never been one to dump my friends because they’re in a relationship.’

JAmie Oliver has hatched plans to turn a shed into a garage at his £6million mansion in Essex, but he will have to make way for hedgehogs.

The 48-year-old chef has applied for a ‘change of use’ of the outbuilding of his 10-bedroom country house, which is Grade II listed, from ‘farm’ to ‘commercial and domestic’.

But he is being urged to keep gaps in his fencing as a ‘hedgehog highway’ so the animals can continue their daily, mile-long food supply, and to build a hedgehog nest box and beehives to boost biodiversity.

Planners are expected to make a decision this month.

Meredith ties the knot with her ‘Viking’

After breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes, she portrayed their breakup by covering her naked body with paint and rolling around on canvas.

Now actress and artist Meredith Ostrom has found love with a Scandinavian financier she calls “The Viking.”

Mrs Ostrom, 47, married Kristian Lokka, 45, at the 800-year-old Ringebu Stave Church in his native Norway.

Meredith, one of the Santa outfit-wearing models with Bill Nighy in Love Actually, shared this wedding photo, left — a conventional choice considering her usual nude artistic technique!

Chryssie, Lady Cobbold, who died on Sunday aged 83, will no doubt have a lively farewell.

When her husband Lord Cobbold died in 2022, Chryssie ordered a coffin with the artwork from his favorite album, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon.

A memorial bench on their family estate, the rock venue Knebworth, reads: ‘See you on the dark side of the moon’.

The coffin was driven through the village of Knebworth in a Land Rover, with speakers blasting the album, before the funeral.