For the past month, we’ve been hearing some weird rumblings about George Clooney’s various real estate holdings. First, we heard that George was considering selling his beloved Lake Como mansion for more than ten times what he paid for it. Then we heard that George is for sure selling his Cabo property because, it was claimed, that George was consolidating and he really wants to spend more time in England, specifically in Berkshire, which is where George and Amal have been renovating a glitzy property for the past eight months or so. The renovation isn’t done (but it’s causing SO MANY problems with the neighbors), but George is already trying to make long-term plans in the area. Like… he wanted to buy a local pub. But God wouldn’t let him.
A vicar has thwarted George Clooney’s plans to buy a pub. The Hollywood heart-throb, 54, has become a regular at the Bull Inn in Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, since buying a £10million manor house in the village last year, and has even called it the ‘greatest pub in the world’.
During a recent visit, Clooney enjoyed a pint of London Pride and the £16.95 ‘meat sizzler’ – and is said to have told a barman that he’d like to buy the site. But it is owned by St Andrew’s Church, and when I visited last week the vicar told me firmly: ‘It’s been in the church for 600 years. We’re never going to sell it. We’re not interested.’
I was going to say something about how American churches aren’t allowed liquor licenses, but I actually think some of them (mostly Baptist megachurches?) do have liquor licenses. Plus, I’m sure there probably are some bars on Catholic-church-owned property in America (and around the world). So maybe this isn’t as weird as I originally thought. Still… George Clooney wanted to buy a pub in Berkshire but he was thwarted by the vicar. It’s like an episode of Miss Marple.
Meanwhile, George and Amal are still enjoying their relaxing holiday in Italy – you can see some recent photos of them here. They’ve been in Como for a month and I have every reason to believe they’ll probably be there throughout August. George doesn’t have anything to promote until next year (Money Monster, Hail Caesar!) and lord knows Unicorn Amal takes off whenever she wants. Star Magazine claimed this week that Amal and George are very much on a baby-making track these days and Amal is hoping that George knocks her up by the end of the summer. Do you think it will happen? She is the most perfect person in the world, so I’m guessing she also has the most fertile womb ever, in the history of womankind.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.
I think this issue with the Vicar is the land that pub sits on – not the pub itself. The land is owned by the church (this is a common thing in the UK as in ye olde worlde the local parish were wealthy landowners) – the pub landlords/owners would have to pay a fee (rent) to the vicarge to use the land for their building. The building itself is probably owned by the brewery or maybe the parish itself but thats not very clear in the article but again if its owned by the parish the brewery pays to rent it. Either way its a nice little bit of income for them.
The CofE used to be the country’s biggest landowner. It isn’t any more but it does still own hundreds of thousands of acres, particularly in rural areas. It also has lots of interest in commercial properties: hotels, shopping centres, that sort of thing.
The other year, it was also in trouble for having a significant investment in Wonga, a named-and-shamed payday loan company.
Not much to be proud of in its £5bn worth of investments, I’m afraid. George would likely be just as responsible an owner of the pub!
How nice would it be, to be so rich, that you could have a pint in a bar, look around and say, “I’d like to buy this!”…..My equivalent would be, I walk into a McDonalds, look around and say, “I’d like to buy those fries”…..
LOL love your comment
Tangentially related: I’d be surprised if baptist churches in the U.S had liquor licenses. Baptists are teetotalers. Zero drinking and zero dancing. (Source: I was raised baptist).
That’s what I said. I was raised Baptist also.
Ya I was confused by the Baptist megachurch thing? I have never seen a Baptist church serve or promote alcohol in anyway. No gambling either. I live in a Baptist area and if you see any of your fellow parishioners at the liquor store buying lotto tickets you should just pretend you don’t see them
Yeah, & some of them are located in “dry” counties, too.
The vicar of Dibley?
Exactly what I thought, Absolutely. I can’t remember if Dibley was meant to be in Berkshire, though…? “Thwarted By The Vicar”…I love it!
Betti: You explained it beautifully. We’ve got much the same arrangements with certain church land holdings here in Australia.
I love that pub! So he can F right off…it is an excellent old English pub and I don’t want a Hollywood a-hole ruining it! I feel very protective of places like that as many in Berkshire and Oxfordshire have had to close down in the last 10 years or so, and I think it should be owned by a brewery or landlord (preferably local where possible) who knows what they’re doing…Not by someone who is just trophy collecting.
Just imagine: Casamigos all over the place, and the village closed down every other month because Georgie wants o party with his extended family…one has to hope it’s just a false rumor.
A very likely casual ‘this is a great place, I’d love to own it’ to a barman turns into ‘George Clooney tries to buy pub’. No love for the Clooney but this is just silly nonsense, as is all the ‘locals with outraged pitchforks’ reporting which, if you read the local papers, amounts to little more than standard concerns with any building project to ensure it doesn’t impact negatively on them, their privacy or the surrounding area.
I was in Starbucks in my neighborhood, and it’s packed all the time. I commented I would love t own a Starbucks in this neighborhood. It amounts to the same thing, just a comment.
Telling a barman he’d like to buy a pub doesn’t mean he intends to, most people do not mean everything literally all the time. So the daily mail calls the vicar to ask him if he’d sell the land, he replies that no, it’s not for sale and it’s turned into a story about something that never even happened.
I hate the way he oversells his wife, her preening and posing makes me cringe and I find their relationship suspiciously insincere but made up stories like this are bizarre, what’s the point? Their genuine nuttiness is more interesting anyway.
Bingo. I felt like I was on the RadarOnline site for a second with desperate nonstories with headlines that had nothing to do with the truth..
I don’t know any Catholic church in Brazil that has a liquor license.
Ye Olde Tequila Bar – coming soon, to a leafy and quaint English village near you.
They’d probably replace the horse-brasses with ceramic cockatoos. Such is the class of couple Cloon.
All I have is that if Amal wants to get pregnant, she needs to put on some weight.
That headline made me giggle. All hail the vicar (of Dibley)!!!
Baptist megachurches have liquor licenses? My how times have changed. I was raised Southern Baptist, and Baptists don’t really drink at least not at my parents’ church I couldn’t wait to quit that church when I turned 16 and could refuse to go. I saw my dad have a drink once a year for a work Christmas party and my grandfather have some whiskey. But that was it.
I know an English guy who married an American and moved to the US. He was a big church goer and good with his hands, so he often did odd jobs for his priest. The day the priest asked him for help to build a gun range out back was the day he decided to move back to the UK, since he didn’t feel able to raise his kids with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other. Friend, wife and kids are now happily settled in rural England.
Oh, wow, were they in the South by any chance?
Thwarted by an English vicar? That’s some comedy gold right there, folks.
More importantly, I wish you would show her clothes, because I love her fashion while on vacay as far as going to restaurants. I loved the dress shorts in polka-dot and the blouse and the shoes. I love the blue shift type dress she wore out to dinner the other night. Her shoes were absolutely fantastic. If she would put on five pounds, she would look so much prettier. You can tell that by looking at her sister. But Amal looks so much softer and younger while staying at the villa.
I agree Jayna loved her Prada metallic sandals, but dont you think her dress is too short, I did.
The light blue and white shift dress? Nah. It’s short, but a beautiful dress. But for the summer, out for a casual evening, while staying at their vacation villa in Lake Como, all tan, still in your 30s, I thought it was great.
A little short for climbing into a boat, I thought.
From the article linked to the “Mostly Baptist megachurches?” text above: “Many conservative denominations — Southern Baptists, for example — still discourage members, and particularly leaders, from consuming any alcohol.”
Now, Catholic monasteries have a long history of beer making, as evidenced in this article:
http://www.drunkenhistory.com/monks
An excerpt:
Benedictine monasteries began appearing in Europe in the 6th century. St. Benedict ordered a life that was self-sustained, and that the monasteries would provide for passing visitors and pilgrims food and drink. These rules, combined with the fact that water was not typically drank during this time because it was unsanitary (people would often use streams and rivers for sewage disposal), led virtually all of the Benedictine monasteries to brew their own beer…So monks brewed. But what made monastic breweries different than the “common brewer” (the term used in England for those who brewed commercially) was that the monks brought study, patience and dedication to the practice.
Echoing what others are saying here about Baptists. I have never been aware of any Baptist church that promotes alcohol consumption in any way.
One of my co-workers said half-jokingly on a work trip that he was Baptist, and the Baptists have to go out of town to drink alcohol in public.
Many Catholic Abbeys make fine wines, as well.
I would like to change my screen name to ‘thwarted by the vicar’.
We should all do that. You can be #1.
Isn’t everyone “thwarted by the vicar” at some point?
They are really scraping the barrel with these boring stories, I bet he was in that pub maybe only once, he has hardly spent anytime at all in the uk from what I can see.
I think the same. How many times was he in UK since the wedding? Maybe once or twice.
I think it Was Miss Marple with a spotted dick in the Vicar;s office that scared him away.
In the Daily Mail link I think it’s interesting in one of the photos that the “dock hand” (or whatever he is) looks like he has quite the opportunity to look up her dress.
If I were getting into the boat while wearing a very short dress I would want my husband or boyfriend to be insulation between me and any wandering eyes.
I also think Amal is at the law firm for PR purposes, only, being she’s constantly on vacation.
I agree, if she is so high powered and in demand as a lawyer as they like to make out, she sure seems to have alot of time to holiday and hang out.
“Thwarted by the Vicar” would make an excellent movie title. Might as well recycle your life material into film.
They call him Hollywood heart throb there??? Omg, he must luv that so much! 😂
His hearthrob days are long gone.