Not just for VIPs

Liz Hurley held a pre-wedding bash there recently, but not all the customers at the Village Pub in the Cotswolds are A-list celebrities. Adam Edwards finds everyone is welcome, whatever the colour of their wellies

The ultra-rich and famous are not the usual patrons of one's local boozer. It is rare to find Hugh Grant tucking into a packet of pork scratchings in the snug or witness Liz Hurley chug-a-lugging a pint of heavy. And when was the last time Elton John and his partner David Furnish put down a pound to reserve the dartboard, or

Donatella Versace asked for more gravy on her Yorkshire at your local?

But if you had happened to drop into the Village Pub in the Cotswold village of Barnsley just a few weeks ago you would have been

guaranteed a rustic Stella Street-type experience - except, perhaps, for the game of arrows, as the pub's dart-board was dumped when its name was changed from the Greyhound.

This ancient inn was the focus for a celebrity clan-gathering just before Liz Hurley's wedding in March.

A civilised tavern

Contrary to images conjured up by its previous name, this is no flat-cap and whippet-racing watering hole.

The VP, as it's known locally, is the antithesis of an "Ee bah gum" boozer - a limestone Cotswold village inn where locals wear corduroy trousers in Teletubby colours to match their designer Wellington boots.

The perfect example of a civilised tavern, it features dining chairs upholstered in hunting tartan and a simple British menu that would not put the Ivy to shame.

In fact, the VP is not dissimilar to that world-famous celebrity restaurant in London: both do excellent Sunday roasts, have reservation books that read like Hello! magazine and charge like a wounded bull for nibbles.

OK, so the Ivy does monkfish cheeks with wild garlic and has its own baby-grand piano, but the VP boasts marinated skate with

capers and a helicopter charter service.

Since Rupert Pendered and Tim Haigh took over in the late 90s, the inn has become as chic as sorbet with Parmesan shavings.

The bar that had once been the proud source of snakebite to taciturn sons of the soil soon began to dole out buckets of Chablis to the chattering beau monde. Its patrons' boots became modish rather than muddy, cigar smoke blew the roll-ups away and the quail's egg eclipsed its vulgar pickled sibling.

Pendered and Haigh finished off the gastro-effect by refurbishing with flagstone floors and open fireplaces, as well as paint from an internationally renowned interior decorator.

Its angular green and cream terrace chairs are fashionable enough to grace the Tate Modern, while its car-park gravel is so thick, it needs to be traversed in a 4 x 4.

Paparazzi heaven

To cap it all, Liz Hurley moved in nearby. The arrival of the A-list celebrity turned the VP into the VIP - and when the actress married Indian businessman Arun Nayar in March, the pub became tabloid property.

"Paparazzi flooded the area," says Rupert Pendered. "They were everywhere - pretending to be ramblers, gamekeepers and local tradesmen. We always spotted them, but we served them anyway and they all behaved very well.

"I don't think any of them ever took a picture inside the pub."

Most of the snappers camped outside the nearby Barnsley House Hotel (now owned by the pub) - so they missed David Furnish sneaking in through the back door of the beer garden for a shandy with a couple of mates.

"The trick is to treat celebrities like anyone else," Pendered says. "We didn't ban anyone, rope off any areas or change our menu. People go to pubs because they are ordinary, everyday places.

"I like to think a quiet drink at the VP offered a break from the hoopla of the wedding ceremony for many guests and paparazzi."

And the local Hook Norton brew certainly proved popular with everyone.

Delicious dinners

While Pendered is discreet about his famous patrons, a reliable source - the ruddy-faced chap in the worn tweed jacket on a stool at the end of the bar - assured me that David Beckham had slipped in for a swift half of fruity Old Hooky bitter .

And there is no doubting the deliciousness of the VP's Sunday lunch with all the trimmings ordered by Donatella Versace, or the rib of beef that the Hurley family sat down to enjoy after the rest of the wedding party had set off for India for the second part of the

ceremony.

"Some publicans think that pandering to our sort of clientele is complicated," says Pendered. "But it makes no difference whether we're in Barnsley, Yorkshire or Barnsley, Gloucestershire.

"I like to think we offer a polite, friendly,

efficient service to everyone. A landlord's role is the same whether he or she is serving Joe Bloggs or Elton John."

But as I pocketed my autograph book and asked for a half pint of David Furnish shandy, I wondered whether Pendered would let me have the best table in the house if I was dressed like a balding 18th-century character in novelty spectacles.