Jeremy Clarkson has been left reeling after being blocked from selling crayfish at his Oxfordshire farm shop.
The often outspoken TV presenter says he has been battling 'bureaucrats' to allow the sale of the fish delicacies at his farm shop featured on his Channel 5 show Clarkson's Farm.
The 62-year-old had hoped to provide an additional source of income for his Diddly Squat Farm and planned to offset the cost of creating ponds by catching and flogging crustaceans in it as “glorified prawn cocktails”.
But the Clarkson’s Farm star explained: “The problem is the crayfish I have are American.
“They’re labelled an invasive species.
“The Government’s forced to spend millions employing a team to make and apply rules about what can and can’t be done with them.”
Meanwhile the Environment Agency failed to offer a glimmer of hope as they told the former Top Gear host it is “currently unable to process applications to trap crayfish."
Clarkson explained how he spent a week with his digger making dams to attempt to prevent rain water cascading down on to the local villages but with the added bonus that he'd have some 'nice ponds'.
Speaking in his Sunday Times column he surmised : "“The upshot is the crayfish will continue to wreak havoc.
"Whereas if the government employed fewer spies and fewer bureaucrats and wrote fewer rules, it'd be a little bit better. And we'd have lower taxes.”
And over on his Instagram Clarkson showed off the pond in question to his 4.8 million followers which prompted a string of banter with the broadcaster.
Sharing the shot he probed: "W ould call this a lake?"
First to reply was musician Jools Holland who wittingly wrote: "There’s something fishy about this."
A further commenter chipped in: "Cod this be any punnier?"
The crayfish saga is the latest in a long line of struggles for the presenter since he upped sticks to the country to turn his hand to running a farm.
His journey has of course been watched by millions of viewers on the often hilarious hit series Clarkson's Farm.
The latest plans to increase the the number of spaces at his Diddly Squat Farm, in Chadlington, Oxfordshire, from 10 to 70 was rejected.
West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) refused the proposal and said it would have been "visually intrusive".
A plan for a new restaurant on the site was also rejected by the authority in January.
