Original subtitles

It was now late February.

Charlie and I were now both busy looking for pubs.

And as for the chuckle brother,

he was still on his nationwide tour.

Thankfully, Harriet was still around.

Today, building new pig pens

in preparation for the boar I'd hired

to make some new piglets.

And, with that done,

I turned up with the farm's perfume manufacturer.

Where's the boar? Not you, not you.

Harriet's bringing him down.

And then, he's going to service these three.

These are the ones we gave birth to in March.

They're nearly one! We can't get Ajax back,

you know, the boar from last year?

Obviously not 'cause that's their daddy. Exactly, he's their dad.

So we've got a new one and he's called Josca.

And he's on his way now. Josca.

He's going to service these three,

but we've got to get a move on, or he has.

We can have none of that Oh, I can't get it in behaviour.

Because if we want Christmas hams, which we do

Yeah.

And we're already at the end of February,

and it's three months, three weeks and three days of pregnancy.

So I want him out of that, porkscrew deployed,

and ready for docking procedures.

Hey, Harriet. Morning.

I've brought you a pig!

Oh, you're big enough.

Hello, Josca. He's nice.

Is he bigger than the last-- Yes, he is.

Bigger than Ajax? He is. Yes.

Come on, piggy piggy! Down we go, piggy!

Now there's a bit of food. Come on, Josca.

I don't want to distract him from the ladies.

Yeah.

This is what I want to see.

Come on, Josca. Let's have some action.

Let's have some bébés.

He's frothing.

This is a one-night stand we're looking for here, mate.

Come on, hurry up, quicker. Get on with it.

Rotters Nightclub, Doncaster, 1978: keep that in your mind.

So I'm just So, let me just You reckon these are the girls?

Look on the bums and you can see the little

Clitoris. Clitoris.

You can't! They don't have clitorises.

Hey! I promise you, they do.

Pigs have clitorises?!

I didn't know that this morning.

There has been no morning in the last 63 years that I've known that.

The little flicky bit? Yeah?

That's the clitoris. And he says you can't see it

They all have them. Look at this one! Oh Jesus!

He can't find it either, I can tell you.

Why do they? Do they? I thought humans--

Do you not know what a clitoris looks like?

I know, I do.

Have you never found one?

I know human girls have them. You've never seen one? All animals--

They don't. It's the start of the vagina, love.

Yes, they do! Look, look, look, this one!

You can see the flick, the flick.

See? It's a little bean. A little bean!

I can't! You can!

It looks like a little Oh.

To be honest, biology wasn't the main thing on my mind with the pigs.

My worry, along with all the other pig farmers in the area,

such as Richard and Vanessa

Hi, Jeremy.

Good to see you.

Well Not good, is it.

was that the local abattoir

had just shut down.

It's a very sad day for all local farmers.

I did some research last night.

There are now only 49 local abattoirs left in the whole country.

There were a hundred small abattoirs in 2007.

Then it was 60, and now there's 49.

And they say that by 2030, there won't be any.

The legislation from the government on abattoirs changes

every five minutes.

Makes it virtually impossible to run an abattoir.

Yes.

So all that farm-to-fork, you know, the government's gone, Yes, farm

It's utterly crazy.

Nobody local can buy our pork, nobody local can buy any local pork,

because we can't get it slaughtered locally, now.

All our pigs are now in one basket, so to speak,

and going to the supermarket.

But that's totally Yeah, but who's slaughtering them?

They go on a three-hour lorry trip.

So you just put yours on a huge great lorry

which goes off to an industrial slaughterhouse?

Exactly.

But when you've already got I've got 39 ready to go next week.

Yeah, the cost of the lorry and the washing-out, that is just

Exactly, it's all just too expensive.

Oh, I don't know what to do. I've got to work out something for next week,

'cause they're all ready to go.

Good luck. Yeah, good luck.

Because my pig enterprise was quite small,

there was no way I could afford to hire my own lorry

to go to a far-away abattoir.

However,

I had to put that problem on the back burner,

because I needed to show Lisa a pub I'd found.

Have you got a business plan?

Yeah. You know an Irish pub, I'm not sure

it's the same now, but it used to be

Well, you tell me actually, 'cause you're Irish.

In Ireland, it seemed to me to be a pub

and then on the other side, you had like a village shop.

Oh, yeah!

The reason why they did that is 'cause all the men would get paid on a Friday,

and the wife would go : Would you get some bread and butter?

And he'd go off with all his wages, go to the pub,

and drink it all and come home absolutely smashed and--

And not buy the bread and butter.

No, forget everything.

So half of the pub was a little shop.

And as soon as the man went in,

the barman would take his shopping list, pack it all up,

take the money out and then give him the rest of the money to drink away.

And as he was leaving, he'd leave As the man was stumbling out,

and he'd put the bag in his hand and say:

Take that back to your wife, now.

That is my business plan.

If we have a pub and a shop in the same place.

Probably a butcher shop as well. A butcher shop would be great!

I know. So you can then go

You can go to the pub and also do your weekly shop.

'Cause at the moment, people go and buy petrol and do their weekly shop

in the supermarket at the petrol station.

How much How can civilisation have reached a point

where you buy your food from a petrol station?

You should buy it from a pub.

The only problem with my plan is that in the UK,

if you want to put a shop in a pub,

the government's pub police say that it must be listed

by the planning police as a Class E establishment.

Welcome, everyone, to the free world.

You wait till you see this place.

It will blow your mind. Ouh!

The main-road Class E pub I'd found

was in Bourton-on-the-Water

The most visited tourist town in the Cotswolds.

It was called The Coach & Horses.

And like so many pubs in the area,

it was going to ruin.

It's 400 years old. It's fantastic.

Wow.

And it's shut.

It keeps going bankrupt.

Nobody has been able to make it work as a business for donkey's years.

Why? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.

Look at it. Look at it.

That is a stone roof. It's not slate, it's stone.

Wow.

And you don't just get the pub. You get this,

which is presently, I think, five bedrooms.

Wow! Airbnb rooms.

They look amazing. You get all this.

And follow me.

Look what else.

You get this

and you make a lovely garden.

And this.

Wow! That's a huge space.

Old stone barn there. Yeah?

There's a stone barn there with a wooden front,

look, all with stone roofs. So you get the pub.

You get that stone barn with the stone roof.

This stone barn

Butcher shop.

I love that!

Your shop, your Diddly Squat shop.

Amazing. With those lovely big windows.

Yeah. Yeah, lovely.

For less Yeah?

Than the price of a three-bedroom bungalow

ten miles from Birmingham, or a two-bedroom flat.

Stop it! Two-bedroom flat in a suburb of London.

Stop the lights! How is that possible?

Because pubs, they're just so cheap. Yeah.

They're so cheap.

Wow!

I mean, hello! I have done well.

I think I might agree with you.

Anyway, do you want to see inside now? I'm so excited.

First, though,

we had to get past the barrage of welcoming signs.

I can see why it closed.

I've never ever been into a pub that says fuck off

more clearly than this one does.

Urgh! What do you mean urgh?

Oh my God, there's something. I don't know if it's--

What is it? Look.

It's like it's really big Oh, it's a sluggy thing!

It's not a slug. It's bigger than a slug.

Oh, it is a slug. It's got babies. That's disgusting.

So you come in. Yeah?

You've got the low beams. You've got the fireplace. A cosy bar.

Oh God. It's just so badly laid out.

Well, apart from the staircase going through the bar.

Now, why they run it through the bar, I don't know.

That is a drawback.

Oh. Oh.

This has changed since I was last This doesn't look very

Oh!

Oh, Jesus.

Now, I've gotta be honest, when I first looked round,

that hadn't fallen down.

But now

Oh my God, look, that's rotten.

That is totally rotten.

You're so negative.

I mean

Lovely light fittings.

You know it was an Indian restaurant until

Well, its most recent incarnation was as an Indian restaurant.

I think it's a fixer upper.

For fuck's sake, Jeremy!

What's the matter? Has that been in a fire?

Well, yes, it has been in a fire because that's the point of it.

It stinks! There has been a fire in here, you know that?

No wonder it

What I love Is that what smells?

Everybody's business goes

There is a moment when you're in business and then you're not in business.

They were cooking this at that precise moment and it's still there.

It's a saag aloo, I believe. It's

Oh, God.

You'd think, Well, I'll just wash this pan up, then I'll go out of business.

But they were just going: I'm just making the saag aloo.

You're out of business.

Does upstairs get better?

She's not going to be very pleased when she sees what's up there.

Oh, my God.

Jeremy!

The carpets have seen better days, I will admit.

I mean

Don't stand still too long because you'll stick to the floor.

Urgh!

Urgh!

Man!

That is bad! They've Urgh!

Look, Fire exit. It's just on a wall!

Which way? This way or that way?

It just says Fire exit.

Fire exit! Run.

No arrow.

And then, it was decorated

by the laziest man

in the universe, okay?

Go in there and give that a lick of paint.

So he got to this little No Smoking sign

and just thought: I could take that off the wall.

Or, I'll just paint over it.

What is this?

Attention.

Please do not interfere with this alarm or any of its sensors.

To prevent security officers arriving shortly

What the fuck is that?

put your key on the light.

Oh, you've done it now, haven't you?

See, I think what we can do

I haven't got We've got a key.

Look, why don't you just throw it out the window?

No, no, no, don't do that, this is not ours.

Oh!

It's not a very good burglar alarm if it goes off after ten seconds, is it?

Finally, we reached the attic,

where even I will admit there was a bit of a problem.

I think of all the things I've seen so far, this is the scariest.

Because, look, this is obviously a supporting beam,

and somebody has just cut it

so they can get through there.

What? How?

Where was the--? How did they enter?

If that beam still existed,

you wouldn't be able to get to this huge door

Yeah, but Into this bedroom.

Is it actually meant to be a door here? Yes, they've carpeted it.

This door, I'm fairly confident,

wouldn't pass muster with the building inspector.

What have you done? What have you done?

What have I done? It's a good question!

What have I done? What have you done? You fucking eejit!

With the guided tour complete,

Lisa was very moderate in her judgement.

The only thing that would help this shithole is a wrecking ball.

It's not a shithole!

Well, so far, I haven't seen anything redeeming.

The outside's nice.

The outside's lovely. Exactly.

I judge a book by its cover.

If it's got, like, a speedboat and a girl in a bikini on it

and some Nazi gold, I'll buy the book.

Also, I had one ace up my sleeve

that would hopefully convince her.

Now, the best thing, this isn't in Oxfordshire.

This is Gloucestershire.

So it's not West Oxfordshire District Council!

While I was trying to win Lisa over,

the farm was alive to the sound of a very busy Harriet.

The one thing that wasn't getting any TikTok treatment, though,

was my Lamborghini,

which, with its ever-growing list of age-related problems,

was starting to properly annoy her.

The splitters on the gear stick are broken!

That's broken.

That's broken.

Pull, pull.

Come on!

And it throws up a fault signal every two minutes.

Argh!

And again!

And again!

Argh! Fucking thing!

Unfortunately for me,

I ran into her in the middle of all this frustration.

Can you help me lift the bonnet?

What's the matter with it?

Error codes. Brakes don't work.

Now I can't get the PTO to start to put that down on the floor.

How do you lift the bonnet up? Do you know?

There's a catch on the front, a black button.

You need to press that button and then push it up. There, look.

There? Yeah. Push it in.

And then push it up.

No, that's not it.

I can't.

It's everything else No, no, hold on. That's not releasing it.

You try. And I'll lift it up if you can get that in.

Yeah, go.

I knew you'd be able to do that. Now I'm embarrassed.

Okay.

So just tell me again, what is the problem?

Error code 18.

Hydraulic circuit signal not valid.

The control unit detects a discrepancy between the oil pressure reading

and the operating status of the transmission.

Erm

Yes.

And then, the PTO won't start.

Obviously I know this.

Which is the PTO button?

On this console on your right.

You mean these?

Yeah. So that's your Auto PTO

and that's your Start PTO.

I think it must be a sensor, like a pressure sensor somewhere.

Actually, while we're here, shall we lift the hedge cutter up

and trim your eyebrows?

What? The hedge cutter?

What's the matter with my eyebrows? Are you kidding?

I'm not surprised you can't see anything.

Says she with two caterpillars crawling out of her eyelids.

Well, I know, take it from me.

But they literally come halfway down your eyelids!

I'm just-- What are you on about?

They are long.

Well, I've never known anyone say that my eyebrows are wrong.

They're a million other things you could say are wrong but

That's better.

What's the matter with them? They are long.

Have you got any scissors, then? Yeah, I've got some scissors.

Go on, then.

Is this your TikTok equipment? Here, you hold this.

What is it? It's a brush.

Right, stand very still.

Is this manscaping?

Yeah, I do this to my dad.

Beautiful.

Okay, sir.

Look at that! Shall we brush them? No!

Can we just get back to farming? Yeah, let's go to farm now.

So, the brakes aren't working.

I want to check that it's got brake fluid in it.

So we need to find the break reservoir.

Honestly, Kaleb and I looked.

We had to ring somebody up and they didn't know.

No one knows where the brake reservoir is on this thing.

I can remember this from four years-- What's this?

What? What's this?

Have you found it?

Yeah. What?

Oh, it's got brake fluid in it. The brakes are just shagged, then.

All right, Gerald?

Hello. Hello, Harriet.

You made a good job of the hedge, considering the tractor you had to use.

Hang on a minute.

I distinctly remember when I used

this tractor and this machine Yeah?

on the same hedge two years ago? Yeah?

You said it was all my fault that it had gone wrong.

But now

Well, you didn't know how to do that at the time properly, did you?

You just went along with itself going like this.

You got a great big Took 'em down as low as that.

We sat there drinking the old champagne together.

You left one great mud heap on the bottom of the grass!

Takes practise, hedge cutting, big time.

If you start big stuff like this

I actually thought, genuinely

If you do the whole farm,

they're more natural there than they are in the garden.

They got the old love match, haven't they?

You know, they go too fast

After what may or may not have been a ticking-off from Gerald,

it was a relief to get back to The Coach & Horses.

So this would have been an open fire, wouldn't it, back in its day?

Fucking great logs thrown on there.

Convinced my instincts were right,

I'd already put an offer in.

And now, Alan the builder had come over to see what work would be necessary.

We're gonna knock this thing down, ain't we? This half penny.

Oh, it's a beauty. You love it? You love it?

She's a beauty! Ain't that ever?

So just give us a list of what you think is going to be a big problem.

I don't see a big problem.

What? No, I don't see a big problem.

There's lots of little jobs,

but there's not a big problem. Not a big problem here.

I can't see no damp.

And we can't move this staircase that goes through the bar?

Well, we can, but we'll have to put

Yeah, it's just accumulation, innit?

If you're gonna spend 400,000 to 500,000,

we don't need to move the stairs, do we, for another two thousand.

Sorry, what did you just say? If I'm gonna spend?

About 400,000, 500,000, 450,000.

450,000? Yeah.

You know my language with 450,000!

450,000? Yeah!

450,000? To 500,000. A 50,000 contingency.

500,000, I know what that is. Is there another way of saying that?

Yeah, well, there is, but, yeah, no, there's not.

450,000 with a 50,000 contingency.

It's English! That's the Cotswold talk!

The words are!

Yes! The words are!

So, let's have a-- Hold on. Just a minute.

You reckon you could get this operational

for 450,000

with a £50,000 contingency? Leaving a fifty thousand Yes.

I'm gonna be honest with you, really honest with you.

I was expecting your number to be bigger than that.

It's normal, ain't it? It's a normal Cotswold old building needs a renovation.

Nothing deeply wrong with it. It's just there's a lot of work.

Outside, we discussed what we'd need to do

to make it into a restaurant and a shop as well.

What are we doing about planning, then, or building regs?

Well, I reckon

I talked to Neil, the planning man. Yeah?

What Neil says we need is a pre-app. Yeah.

Pre-application, I think it's. Yeah.

So, but he said it can be very rough. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

It can just be, We want to take this bit down and replace it with this,

here's an aerial view of the site.

What do we come under? What council? Are we Witney--

Cotswolds! It's Cotswolds, yeah.

It's not West Oxfordshire! Cool, yeah.

But if we do the pre-app,

get them to say: That looks like a good idea.

We go for it.

He said Cotswolds' a way different animal to West Oxfordshire.

He really rates them. We've gotta get into them, then.

Yeah, he just says it's a good council. So that's great.

To be honest, it's all in good nick, ain't it?

That finial on the end-- That's not what Lisa said!

No, but--

We'll put her right!

Given that the pre-application plans were a priority,

my next meeting was with Annie and Scott,

the couple who run the burger van at the farm shop,

to get their advice on how the pub should be laid out.

Our urgent problem is, if we wanna catch the summer,

which we do, we've gotta get the plans in.

The average rule of thumb is between 1.7 and 1.9 square metres per cover.

1.7 to 1.9

If the goal is to do food from the farm,

you need to maximise the number of tables you've got.

Which you will need a decent-sized kitchen for.

We're thinking of pulling all this down.

Right. We'll put one of those glass boxes up.

Lovely.

And this will be a restaurant as well,

if the plans go as we want them to.

With the layout eventually sorted,

I now had to wait for the plans to be drawn up.

This meant I could get back to farming.

So, Harriet and I went to the mushroom bunker to restock.

They take how long to grow?

Two weeks and then they should be Two weeks?

sprouting. That's a quick turnaround.

Oh, yeah. And then it's all hands on deck.

There's no time for any other farming once these start growing.

There isn't!

Yeah, right!

Lisa would love to have been helping us today

but she's working on a new scent, which she's calling Silage.

Well, actually, she's calling it Silage.

Having restocked the mushrooms,

we had to deal with Charlie's wild bird seed.

And the drive back to the yard was, for me,

extremely and unexpectedly enlightening.

So, on TikTok, there's a lot of young farmers.

There is. And all of you just dance.

I don't dance!

Well, you play music.

Yeah, I Yeah.

But the whole reason I started on TikTok was because

I was showing me

It was literally just a video of me just driving a tractor, rapping.

Yeah. Erm

And it was more so to show, you know,

that why can't girls do the exact same that the lads can do.

But is that what's going on? Girls just going, Look, we can do this?

Well, yeah, for the most part of it.

There's less girls than there is lads.

There's a lot of lads that, you know, are on it and showing it.

But that's why I think girls need to go and do it,

because why can't they do it?

If you're sitting on a tractor all day long,

it's quite lonely.

Yeah, it is very lonely sitting on a tractor all the time.

But if you do that, in some way,

you're connecting with other people. Yeah, I think so.

So it doesn't feel like you're out there all alone all day long.

And, to be fair, for the majority of it,

people are really nice and comment and say, like,

you know, get on that a girl's doing this and la-de-da.

And it makes you feel a bit

Better. Yeah.

I know everybody talks about mental health.

I used to call it being unhappy. But apparently it's mental health now.

But it's bad in farming, so.

It's absolutely awful in farming, yeah.

In our local young farmers,

there's been quite a few lads that have taken their own lives.

You're kidding? No.

You knew people? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because they can't get on in farming?

Well, that, and the fact that it's such a lonely thing.

And the fact that they never have any money because

Well, they're farmers. They're farmers.

They never have the money to do anything they want.

And, like, all we do is work, work, work.

And it's not very often that we go away and get a holiday,

one, because we don't have the money for it,

two, because we don't have time to do it.

So it's just It's lonely.

But, yeah, no, it is a massive thing, mental health in farming.

Hopefully, TikTok helps a bit and brings

It puts you in touch with other people who are in the same boat as you.

Yeah, for sure. And then somebody goes:

It's pointless sitting there doing that silly dance.

And of course it is pointless if you're

If you're the Grinch.

Well, I don't know what the grinch is. But, yes.

So the bird seeds at the back of this barn.

Yeah. Are you ready?

What for?

Are you ready?

What the fuck is that?

That is the best bit of kit you will ever see.

Look at this and that!

I know, I know, but where's it come from?

Chandlers.

What? Chandlers.

What's that?

It's a dealer.

So you've borrowed this on a trial loan?

Yeah. Demo.

Yeah. Don't you love it?

Look at the exhaust pipe.

That's like out of a metro.

Well, why do we need that?

Because it's a proper engine.

Do you know how many horsepower this is?

Oh, no, not enough. What is it?

155. Christ, that's

That is perfect.

Can I just ask, why have you got it in?

Because we need it for spraying.

Why don't you use that for spraying?

'Cause the sprayer isn't compatible with it.

What? The hydraulic flow rate on that

will pump too much oil into the sprayer and it'll just break the sprayer.

So your sprayer doesn't actually fit on that tractor.

Well, how does Kaleb do it?

On his tractor.

Oh, so he's using Oh.

No, never fit, never will. Oh

And you like

Massey Ferguson. They're my tractors.

Poor old Lamborghini. He's going to be feeling a little bit put out by--

Well, I bet it looks It just looks poor, doesn't it, now.

You've only got two buttons here. That's not enough.

What? Well, I've got four.

Well No, that's the link arms.

Why would you have four buttons for the link arms?

Up and down.

You can actually push out your hitch from the other side.

You can move the hitch with? You can, yeah. You push.

You know when you're in there and you say,

Oh, push it out and I can't see anything?

You can actually do that from down here.

Okay, so it's got that one feature.

No, it's got multiple more.

Sorry, Lamborghini.

The rep this morning said:

See if Jeremy wants to buy it! And I was like, erm

See if Jeremy wants to Why would I buy that?

Where does it say Lamborghini on it?

Despite my loyalty to Lamborghini,

I was secretly intrigued.

So, when Harriet went off to kill some slugs

I sneaked the Massey out for a quick test-drive.

Christ, it's got brakes. A turning circle

Mirrors I can see out of.

I've got to be honest

it's quite easy to drive, this.

It's a lot easier than the Lamborghini.

Even though I was feeling desperately unfaithful to the Lambo,

my head was being turned.

It's got an iPad in it!

But, since the Massey was the only modern tractor I'd ever driven,

I decided to be thorough

and test-drive some others as well.

Before I could do any of that, though,

I had to attend an important meeting at Gloucestershire County Council

to talk to their highways people about how we could deal

with the possible traffic issues at the pub.

How do you do? Neil Warner. Pete Bungard.

Good to meet you. Hello, Pete. Charlie.

Hello, Charlie. Jeremy Clarkson.

How are you? Pete Bungard.

And Charlie and I were accompanied by our planning expert,

Neil.

Context, I suppose.

It's an existing restaurant, pub

I think most recently an Indian restaurant,

so the purpose of the pre-application with Cotswold is to talk about

how we bring this pub, which has been through

eight different operators in the past ten years,

bring it back to life, make it a viable business

and an asset for Bourton-on-the-Water.

So this is why we're coming to you guys,

because obviously the highways is an important bit to talk about

and it's getting that bit right.

Given my experience of council meetings in the past,

my hopes were not exactly high.

knowledge as to where we might go with the site.

However

So, we're pro-development, we're pro-tourism.

And the Highway Authority's job

is to try and say yes.

You know, our starting point is

we hope we can accommodate the consequences of this.

If not, we'll suggest ways you could make it safer.

We're really, really keen to work with you,

understand what it is that you want to achieve,

understand some of your experiences

from your previous endeavours at Diddly Squat,

and to see whether or not we can take some of that learning

and make sure that we can mitigate or avoid some of those issues

on what is, on the face of it,

a very exciting investment opportunity that links in very much

The meeting continued in this vein

to a very promising conclusion.

It was very nice to meet you. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Hopefully that was useful.

It was very good, yes. Very good.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

And the following day, there was more good news

because we'd finally found a way of transporting the pigs to slaughter.

Charlie has found a farmer

near Banbury. Right.

And he's organised a lorry

to go round all the farms with animals that need slaughtering,

and it's sort of going round picking them up and then takes them there.

And it's only a hundred quid.

That's incredible.

It's like the school run.

Animal-farm school run.

Hey yup! Morning.

Morning, morning!

Piggies! Come on!

Come on! Come on, piggies!

Here we go. Come on, boys. Come on!

How many have we got there?

Is that ten? Ten.

Lovely job.

With the pigs loaded up,

we scooted over to the yard

to wait for the school bus.

Bloody Nora!

That's a big wagon. That's the biggest school bus.

That is a school bus right there.

Morning.

Morning. How are you?

Good. How are you? Good.

So, do you take cows, pigs,

sheep, everything? Yeah.

Is that a double-decker? Yeah.

Wow.

Come on, then! Up, up!

Bye, pigs.

You saved our bacon, not theirs.

Thank you very much.

Movement order for the pig police.

Thank you. See you soon.

It's a bloody good idea. The Volvo XC90.

School-run lorry. Of the livestock world!

It is! The XC90 of the livestock world! Exactly right!

We'll see you again. Thank you, guys.

Take care.

A couple of days later,

I suggested to Lisa that we should go to our local pub for a date night.

So that I could romantically explain the plans for my pub.

So, here it is.

It's a pre-planning-application thing.

It just says to the council:

This is what we've got in mind, just so you know.

That's all it says. So here's the pub.

That's that.

You put a glass wall here, a glass wall there, roof.

So in the wintertime it will be freezing and in the summer it will be boiling.

Well, no. I know you're from Ireland,

but over here we have something called central heating

and air conditioning.

And then, the kitchen is here.

And then, you come through here, or through that,

into the drinking bit.

There's nothing that makes you feel, Oh, God, it's all a bit posh, this.

It's all very straightforward, down-to-earth.

Good food. Yeah.

No frills. Horse brasses, definitely having those.

I'd love a bit of patterned carpet somewhere.

With a big sign at the back saying Doncaster Rovers.

Patterned carpet? Yeah, squirly-whirly.

The only reason they had patterned carpet is when people vomited on them,

it wouldn't show. We're not having patterned carpet.

Anyway, that's the plan. Okay.

And I want to make a pub

with really good food from British farmers,

so we're supporting British farmers,

that isn't expensive.

I'm gonna pay proper money for their produce.

And then, I have to somehow work out a way

of making this the cheapest-to-run pub

ever.

You could hire convicts.

But if I close my eyes I can see it.

I hear you, I hear you, but I just think it's a great idea,

but you need to do some homework, especially when you have to spend money.

I know. You're not the best at spending money.

So that's all going to be a shock.

But, if we stay here and get massively pissed,

it won't seem quite so daunting.

Sadly, though, we had to go home for an early night.

Because the following morning, we had the big tractor test.

Sad day.

I mean, it's 20

So it's

12, 13 years old.

I think it should have retired a couple of years ago.

It's just the brakes never work.

They don't. It blows fuses all the time.

It does. We paid forty thousand for this one

five years ago?

That's been really good. For forty grand, that's been amazing.

I know, and everybody laughed at me when I said I've spent £40,000.

You've spent £40,000 on a Lamborghini?

That's phenomenally cheap!

You know that Massey Ferguson

that Harriet's borrowing? Yeah, it's very sweet.

Do you know how much that costs?

160,000.

Wow. 160,000.

That's a lot. But anyway.

So I'm going to look. If this is a Lamborghini

Yes?

I've decided to have a look at the Golf range of tractors.

Think of it in terms of underwear. Hm-mm.

This is Agent Provocateur.

I'm gonna look at the Bridget Jones beige, big pants tractors.

Oh, look.

At that moment,

Bridget Jones came trundling up the drive.

It's green, so it's a John Deere.

Take a guess how much.

For this little thing?

£223,000. Wow!

Morning, John.

John Deere! Morning!

Do you know an interesting thing about John Deere?

I don't.

I do. Do you?

He never saw a tractor in his life.

Did you know that?

Yeah, that's true! It's a true fact.

It's only got four cylinders.

Well, how many cylinders do you need, though?

Well, eight, usually.

Uh-oh, we've got a delivery.

Who's this? What's

Oh, it's another tractor.

Why would you get more than one?

I've got them all. All of them.

What's all of them?

Eight.

Eight coming today? Eight?

Ah, Jesus. What have you done?

You didn't realise they were gonna come on trailers, did you?

Eejit.

God's sake.

Sensing the mood,

I hid in the nearest tractor I could find,

which was a Fendt.

What the bloody hell?

What do they all do? All very simple.

You can make them do It's not!

whatever you want to do!

Oh, you can choose what each button does?

Yeah, you can assign anything, anywhere, to suit the job you're doing.

Oh, you've got some more coming.

Oh no, I have, yes.

Oh, shit, I've really overdone this, haven't I?

Ah, Jesus.

Can you make it down there?

The new model of this one now does 65 MPH.

Does it really?

Oi! Out!

Now! And sort this calamity. Excuse me.

Excuse me, sir. You're needed.

It's International Women's Day tomorrow. She's practising.

International Women's Day! It doesn't matter who!

The fucking eejit male!

Easiest one to get in and out of.

That is actually rather good, isn't it?

Can you make it down?

I won't get round.

You won't get round? Okay.

With the chaos growing,

I immediately hid in another tractor cab.

This is the Italian tractor you should have bought.

Oh, it's Italian? Italian, yes.

Made in northern Italy.

Family-owned firm.

We build 22,500 tractors a year. Oi!

Move it!

Sorry. Shut the door.

It's a good-looking tractor, this. You can tell the Italians have had

Oh, my giddy aunt. Oh no, that's Harriet.

Oh. My. God.

Shit!

Jesus Christ!

I thought you'd be like a kid in a Barbie shop.

What have you done? Well, I got them all in,

which was, I think with hindsight, a mistake.

How do you test-drive a tractor?

Well, put machinery on it.

For a week.

For a week!

We can't do that, we've got a day.

What are you gonna do with them all?

I don't know.

The only solution I could think of

was to allow myself to be engulfed

in a tidal wave of sales patter.

57 K semi-power shift.

All of the gear, engine and transmission is all colour coded in orange.

Anything yellow's your PTO.

Anything blue is to do with your hydraulics.

But instead of 1 to 4, they're colour-coded

blue, orange, green and grey.

So in one hand, you can have 27 controls

if you really wanted.

Dual-clutch technology, like a racing car.

There's two clutches: an odd clutch and an even clutch.

So if you just put your foot down, it'll work its way up from B1

all the way to D5.

And if you're really interested,

that gives you two more sets of those nine controls.

So you've got a wheel on, like, a hydraulic ram.

So you fire hydraulic oil into the ram

and it will push the ram up, extend it or retract it,

depending on which way you send oil to it.

I didn't understand any of that.

An hour later, though, I was more bewildered than ever.

So, I came up with a plan

to help me sort the wheat from the chaff.

I'm gonna test one feature,

the one feature which has driven me mental in the Lamborghini,

the trailer hitch,

which is

this.

Now, you'd imagine

you'd push a button, it would come out,

hook onto whatever you're trying to attach,

and then you push a button, and it goes back in again.

But it never works like that.

One of them will have a trailer-hitch system that works.

If the trailer-hitch system works,

or works in a way that I can work it Yes.

It's likely everything else works.

Nice. So you want something that speaks your language.

Yeah.

Once all the tractors and drivers were lined up,

I took charge of giving them their instructions.

Hello?

Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé We are the champions

Jesus Christ!

Does it actually work? Where's the thing?

Right, sorry about that, everybody.

We're going to do a tow-hitch release test.

First I want Hang on a minute.

Have they got to get What about their arms?

So, arms start on the floor.

Arms start on the floor.

Yeah. And?

Hitches out and down and then stop.

No, they've gotta start with their hitches in.

Yeah, so arms on the floor. Lift your arms up.

Release your hitch. Drop your hitch down.

It's the first to get their hitch out.

And down.

And down? Yeah.

First to get your hitch out and down, okay?

Except for the Fastrac 'cause that can't go out.

Except for the F What?

The Fastrac can't go out. It can only go down.

Apart from the Fastrac. JCB, you can only go down.

Out.

Down.

Down.

With the rules clearly explained,

we then broke out the stopwatch.

Ready, steady, go.

Oh, here it comes.

And

Stop. 13.6.

Right, Mr Case.

14.57.

Oh!

Go!

That is fast arms.

They are!

It's still gotta go down.

19! 19 on the John Deere.

Right. Valtra.

Fastest finger first.

Go.

Look, you see?

My case rests.

It's not just me that can't ever bloody do this.

Ah, there we go. Finally. And then

Nearly, nearly!

Stop.

Four days

eleven hours.

Right. New Holland. Go.

Oh, this is quick! Bloody quick.

Stop.

12.04.

The New Holland remained unbeaten.

and the test had given me a top three from which to choose.

The Case,

the Fendt

and the New Holland.

Making that choice, though,

was filling me with absolute dread.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire suit. That's it.

I wish I'd called and checked on the dress code earlier.

Today was definitely a suit-wearing day,

because Neil the planning guy and I had to meet with another local authority,

Cotswold District Council,

to talk about my planning application.

But, given how things had gone with the Highways people,

the mood was good.

I've made some notes. Yeah?

And we're looking for what?

We're looking for them to be helpful, to say yes to things,

rather than a West-Oxfordshire no. Yeah.

Yeah, just have some agreement that they're going to work with us,

and they think it's a good idea, which it clearly is, isn't it, so.

Well, yeah.

The Cotswold Council wouldn't allow us to film the meeting,

so we had to cut cameras at this point.

But afterwards,

Charlie, Neil and I met up in a café

to discuss how it had gone.

Okay, guys, come on. I mean, I'm

I'm just I cannot believe

we're back where we started from.

I have to tell the ladies and gentlemen what's happened.

I genuinely looked for a pub

out of West Oxfordshire

to get away

from West Oxfordshire District Council.

Turn up at the meeting,

and who should be sitting there, on Zoom,

but Phil Shaw, our nemesis from West Oxfordshire District Council,

who's also the planning officer for over here in Gloucestershire.

And we had a man from Bourton Council,

and he just didn't have a single positive thing to say,

not one single positive thing.

He was very concerned, wasn't he, about his residents.

Well, people are going to come to your pub. They're going to come.

I know they are, that's the point of a pub.

I wrote down the positives and

Oh, well, that's a short list.

Yeah! Well, there were some.

They did accept I mean, the pub's had eight owners in twelve years.

The guy said it's just not doing very well.

Eight owners in twelve years, all failed.

We come along, we'll make a success of it.

Oh, that's what we're worried about.

That is genuinely what they're worried about, because:

Oh, you'll bring a lot of people.

Well, that's good. They said theme park.

You're gonna open a theme park. No, it's a pub with a restaurant and a shop.

Disneyland does not have butcher shops in it, as far as I know.

No.

I honestly believed,

because it is an existing pub and because it will eventually crumble,

'cause nobody's gonna buy it apart from us,

they would bite our hands off.

But I'm filled with gloom after that.

I want to get this open by

the August Bank Holiday weekend. Hmm.

There's going to be nothing smooth about this planning application, is there?

I think it might be time to have

a bit of a rethink.

No, Lisa.

When was the last time you gave birth to anything? Shut up.

It has a good flow to it.

Very, very charming.

You're back!

You all right?

I had to get someone to help me.

You'll meet Harriet. You'll like her.