Harry Ashcroft Interview with Steve Cotten 18/10/24

A group of people visited the Paltimore Arms pub in North Devon, which is known for its unique qualities. The pub is off the grid, running on candles, solar panels, and water from a nearby spring. Steve Cotton, the landlord, is famous for being Britain's grumpiest landlord. He shared stories about running the pub and his political involvement. Despite its remote location, the pub has never shut down, even during COVID. It also has its own polo team. Steve started polo training to impress a woman named Rachel. Over the weekend, I made the six-hour, England-splitting, semi-circular drive from Liverpool down to North Devon to celebrate with my family my grandma's 80th birthday. On Friday afternoon, as a group of us traversed the narrow country lanes, a glowing sight welcomed us in from the bleak and windy Exmoor Hills, a humble and simple exterior that didn't actually show off the storied saga waiting for us inside. The Paltimore Arms is unlike any pub I've ever been in. Firmly cash-only, completely off the grid and ran by candles, solar panels and water from the spring up the hill. Its most notable aspect, however, is its landlord, who, much to my surprise, is already quite famous as Britain's grumpiest landlord. Steve Cotton and his pub have been featured in major news outlets across Britain over the last few years. He is the man full of tales and anecdotes of the last decade of running the Paltimore Arms. I asked if he would sit down and talk to me about how he runs the pub and what makes it so unique, as well as his political involvement as a parliamentary candidate for North Devon in the last two general elections. He was more than happy to oblige, and the next day I returned, where before I had even began conducting the interview, he had started working the audience of pub-dwellers that consisted mainly of my extended family. Steve loves an audience and was telling one of his stories, this one about his late friend Dave, who started an airport in the beer garden. Right. Looks like he's going to be a radio star at the University of Liverpool. So I'm here at the Paltimore Arms in Yorktown, North Devon, and I'm here with... Exmoor. Exmoor. And I'm here with the landlord, Mr Steve Cotton. Steve, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on. Could you please just tell our listeners a bit about who you are, why you bought the pub, and what you've been doing with it? Right. I'm Steve. I put the pub on 11 and a half years ago because nobody wanted it. It's in the middle of nowhere, there's no neighbours, there's no village. Completely off-grid, running with candles, oil lamps, generators, anything that could come to that. At the moment it's run by the sun. So that's working, cut to it. But the pub is awesome, and if I hadn't taken it on it would have gone forever. We can't have that. It's my only business pub. Don't do what the other pubs do because they're all f***ing failing. So just don't do it. I don't do food. Well, my bar mate cooks stuff on a Thursday night, but you wouldn't want to eat that c***. I mean, it really is diabolical. It's like, they come in on a Thursday and I put a bottle of olive oil on every table. And they all say, what's that for? I say, because they love it sliding the dust in a lot easier. So are you on the electricity grid? Are you running water or anything? No, no, no. The water comes from the spring two miles away, and quite frequently just walk the miles and miles and poke out frogs out of holes and things just to get the water going. Some days it's four or five days when there's no water before we can fix it. What do you do when that happens? Well, the farmers just turn up with five gallons of water out the front, and we put a bucket in each toilet, and we just keep the pub going. Because whatever it takes, we don't care. The pub has never got a shut. I mean, it never has shut. Not even during, yes it did during COVID. I was the law-abiding citizen, and I adhered to all the rules, because it was, well, I didn't want to put anybody's lives at risk. You can go to Tesco, that's alright, 500 people walking around doing that, but apparently that was okay. That's the way it was. I mean, I'm not bitting it or whatever, but no, what I could say was COVID was absolutely fun. I mean, the police were here every single day, two cars pretty much every day, they'd raid the pub, they'd turn the pub upside down. I got my own police helicopter right above the pub filming me. I mean, it really was hilarious. I actually got chalkboard in there, and I wrote on it, and I held it up to the helicopter, it's like, do you want a beer? And the helicopter visibly was shaking because they were laughing so much, and I wrote on the back, can you park right in the back? But no, it was fantastic times. Yeah. Just as Steve and I were getting onto the Yarddown Polo Club, some more patrons arrived and were directed to pour their own drinks, a staple feature of the Poltimore Arms. And you're the only pub in the country with your own polo team? Yes. Somebody suggested that I get a dart team, and I said no, it'd be better than that. So we have got a polo team, Yarddown Polo Club, and we've just had our first season last summer, and basically the team is 20, 25 useless **** basically, ex-race jockeys, all sorts of people, me, and I've only been riding for three years, so has Steve Lernaker. But we are taking on the world, and we will be playing Calgary Park this next season, and all the rest of them. And we have got Mr. Ineos potentially as a sponsor, which will be good. Yeah, Mr. Raccoon. We've got more people coming. More people, it's our family. Are they all your family? Yeah. Well, go and get your own beer, I think. Straight in the bar, just go and get it yourself. Tell me that, Steve. No, no, no, it's like that. You'll find it. But it's not difficult, is it? You make a customer pour their own beer, and then they can't go on a trip and buy them and say, it was ****, or I was rude to myself because I poured my own beer. I had to tell myself to **** off. So what made you start polo training? To impress a woman. What woman was it? Actually, it's called Rachel. I won't mention her full name because I don't want to embarrass her, but Rachel Campbell Johnson, the actress of The Times. I only used to play in the road, and I have spent the last 10 years doing everything to try and impress her. What sort of things have you done? Skydiving, you know? I loved it, but it's all on film. And all the other skydivers, it's like, what are you doing it for? Doing it for the office. Doing it for the office. Doing it to raise money for the office, because granny had a knife there. What are you doing doing it for the office, because granny had a knife there. 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