Jeremy Clarkson announces new Hawkstone Breeze Lager Merlin Griffiths, the affable barman from Channel 4 's First Dates and bono fide pub landlord has issued some advice to Jeremy Clarkson as he embarks on his own pub ownership adventure. Jeremy recently purchased a pub in The Cotswolds for close to £1 million despite having no experience running bars. Speaking exclusively to Express.
co.uk , Merlin, who returns to screens tonight (August 6) in a new series of First Dates said: "They're [bars] as simple, or as complicated as you need them to be. "I would imagine an owner operator such as Mr Clarkson would no doubt be hiring capable management as well who deal with all the sort of day to day stuff, day-to-day all your compliance and health and safety and bits and bobs like that.
You know, all the Business Administration aspects of it," he ruminated. "So once you take that complicated part out of the way, then they're as simple as you want them to be, or as complicated as you want them to be. "Do you want to run a menu with 35 items on it? Do you want to run 25 different ales? What about 100 whiskeys and so on.
Then you can run a complicated bar," he advised. READ MORE: Gabby Logan joins Simone Biles in criticism of Olympics correspondents Jeremy Clarkson is turning his hand to running a pub after purchasing a Cotswolds premises (Image: Getty) "Or do you just want to serve two or three local ales, one or two lagers, one house white, one house red. that sort of thing and you can.