Jeremy Clarkson will finally sell tomato sauce at his pub after originally declaring the eatery a “no ketchup” zone.
When the 65-year-old opened his Oxfordshire watering hole The Farmer’s Dog in August 2024, he revealed it would “serve exclusively British food”. This meant that the popular condiment, which is made from ingredients grown outside the UK, would be banned from the menu.
Following thousands of requests from customers, however, Clarkson has approved the sauce’s addition to the menu after a Chatham-based producer made it using solely British ingredients.
Condimaniac ketchup is made of tomato passata from Isle of Wight, apple cider vinegar from Hants, Essex salt, and sugar and onions sourced from Britain.
“Making a 100 per cent British ketchup after Jeremy Clarkson alerted us to the fact there wasn’t one was very hard,” the company’s boss Kier Kemp said in an Instagram video chronciling the sauce’s creation.
“It turned out to be really hard,” he added, noting Clarkson’s Diddly Squat team requested the sauce “as soon as possible”.
Kemp said the company is making two sauces at the same time – one containing carrots and onion “used to thicken” the sauce, as there is no purely British tomato puree.
Condimaniac, which started with 1,700 bottles, will be offered at the Clarkson’s butcher and bottle shop. It sauce will also be sold at Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm Shop, based in Chipping Norton, from Friday (15 August).
The move is a big turnaround from Clarkson, considering the former Grand Tour star became so fed up with requests that a sign was put up telling customers to stop asking for the condiment.
Speaking about the products on offer when the pub first opened its doors, Clarkson said: “The menu changes – it’s whatever we’ve got. There’s no Coca-Cola, no coffee. Other pubs do coffee. We do British food.
“Everything that you consume in here – every single thing – even the black pepper and the sugar, is grown by British farmers.”
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Diddly Squat, a 1,000-acre holding, is at the centre of Clarkson’s Farm, which follows the TV presenter’s journey as a new farmer and the challenges he faces along the way.
The 64-year-old former Top Gear presenter paid less than £1m for the pub based in Asthall, which was formerly known as The Windmill.
Its opening, however, was marred by complaints surrounding the absence of prices on the menu, with many fans suspecting that this might suggest dishes would be more expensive than at other pubs in the area.
When one person joked on X/Twitter that they would need to remortgage their home to afford a round of drinks at Clarkson’s pub, the presenter bluntly responded: “It’s £5.50 a pint.”
