Irascible motormouth Jeremy Clarkson, who was involved in a long-running dispute with officials over his farm in the Cotswolds, has come up with a cunning ruse to avoid a row at the pub he’s bought.

Instead of Clarkson’s name being above the door of the boozer near Burford in Oxfordshire, he has asked one of the Duke of Sussex’s old friends to handle the application.

I can disclose that the licence to serve alcohol was transferred to a company called Baobab Operations Ltd last month.

The firm is run by Johnny Hornby, the advertising king who was chairman of Prince Harry’s African charity Sentebale.

Hornby’s business partner, Mark Devereux, also has his name on the application.

They have already got the go-ahead to serve booze at what was the failing Windmill ale house, which Clarkson bought for £1 million. His team of builders is currently at work in the premises, but he has admitted it might not be ready to open until next year.

Former Top Gear host Clarkson has been involved in a long-running row with bosses at West Oxfordshire District Council over parking issues at his Diddly Squat Farm Shop.

Last summer, I disclosed that Hornby, 57, had stood down as a trustee of Sentebale, the charity Harry co-founded in 2006 to tackle HIV and help vulnerable children in Africa. He had been a trustee for 11 years, five of which he spent as chairman.

Clarkson, who was already involved in a brewing operation with Hornby, wrote a notorious article for The Sun (for which he later apologised) in 2022, saying he hated Harry’s wife, Meghan, on ‘a cellular level’.

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