Just as Monaco has its Grand Prix and Milan its Fashion Week, so the Cotswolds are limbering up for the social highlight of the year.

From the pulling of the first pint of Guinness on Tuesday morning, through to Friday’s Gold Cup, the four-day Cheltenham Festival of racing is the one date in the diary when le tout Stow-on-the-Wold gathers to see and be seen.

The world may be teetering on the brink as the battered British economy waits for the timer on Rachel Reeves’s tax bomb to detonate with the new financial year. But there is one happy corner of the kingdom which continues to defy the laws of economic gravity.

Here, along the hilly crescent of Jurassic limestone which runs from Oxfordshire into Gloucestershire, there is still no shortage of people prepared to spend £140 on a tequila shot or £25 on a small Easter egg.

And all the while, the household names redraw their Cotswold empires like 19th century colonial powers.

That is why the non-racing talk among next week’s Cheltenham crowd will be of what appears to be a collision between two great imperial forces: celebrity-journalist-farmer Jeremy Clarkson from Diddly Squat Farm versus landowner-retailer-hotelier Lady (Carole) Bamford of Daylesford House.

For years, the latter – whose husband chairs the family engineering firm, JCB – has been steadily expanding her Daylesford brand from organic sausages into a hospitality empire.

In parallel, to the delight of millions of viewers and pretty much the entire farming community, Mr Clarkson has used his star power to transform a chaotic West Oxfordshire farm into a roaringly successful flagship for British agriculture.

On some days, his farm shop rivals the visitor numbers at nearby Blenheim Palace (even though the gold loo has been stolen).

On top of which, his conversion of a run-down pub next to a grubby lay-by once popular with the ‘dogging’ community has proved just as popular. 

As a new season opens, I meet diners who have come hundreds (even thousands) of miles to enjoy a slice of Clarkson gammon and a pint of his beer (just don’t ask for ketchup).

However, things may now be getting a little too close for comfort in the tiny village of Asthall – previously best-known as the home of the Mitford sisters.

For the new Clarkson venue, called The Farmer’s Dog, is so near to the southern outpost of Lady Bamford’s empire, a pub called The Three Horseshoes, that they are – literally – in pub-crawling distance of each other. 

It is just a 15-minute walk from Clarkson’s muddy car park to the cosy, oak-beige, farrier-themed inglenooks and fluffy towels chez Bamford.

Aside from two contrasting menus (and the fact that The Three Horseshoes has bedrooms), the obvious difference is numbers. 

While Lady B might pull in 50 diners on a good night, Clarkson will often do 350 – having sat the same number for lunch.

It now emerges that just four years after adding the Three Horseshoes to her ever-growing portfolio – and revamping the place at some expense – Lady Bamford has just put it back on the market very quietly.

The woman frequently hailed as Queen Of The Cotswolds is ceding ground. Given that her track record is one of expansion, it has certainly raised eyebrows. 

Are the chi-chi Chipping Norton crowd now being displaced by the Clarkson fanbase?

Now that he has reached far beyond the old car-mad Top Gear demographic to become a latter-day James Herriot – loved by entire families across the generational divide – is Clarkson striking a populist blow against the gentrification of Britain’s poshest rural enclave?

Are the social tectonic plates shifting? Have we, indeed, hit peak Cotswolds? Neither side is talking. 

But after a week pottering in the area, I can confidently say that the answer to all of these is: no. Rather, the Cotswold gold rush is actually continuing at full speed. And the locals don’t seem to mind.

Take Lady Bamford’s Daylesford farm shop. I had visions of nice fruit ‘n’ veg with a smart cafe attached. Instead, it is an extensive, sweet-scented retail campus. 

I find sumptuous food halls (£8 for a pack of pumpkin ravioli, £8.50 for a pack of wild venison dog treats), spa rooms and galleries pushing an entire curated country kitchen lifestyle of the sort the Duchess of Sussex is so keen to flog to Americans.

There are converted barns full of furniture, crockery, plants, some wholesome toys (nothing plastic) and an £18 Easter Egg hunt bucket. 

There’s also a fine wine shop and a private members Bamford Club starting at £2,200 a year with a stainless steel pool and barrels full of ice for cold water plunges.

It’s not the Archers let alone real life, of course, but then nor is the Soho Farmhouse country club up the road, with its weekend influx of urban celebs, finance and media folk plus Beckham chums and matching valet car park.

The locals might scoff but they also understand the knock-on benefits for jobs and local producers. 

They enjoy dropping in at Daylesford for a coffee, a £5.50 brownie and a gawp and are delighted if the well-coiffed cashmere crowd want to pay £48 for geranium handwash.

The Daylesford orbit extends to the neighbouring village of Kingham – once named by Country Life as the best in Britain – where the doors and window frames of every house owned by Lady B (all 34 of them, available to rent circa £700-a-night) are painted in the grey-green Daylesford livery.

In the centre of the village, also in company colours, is The Wild Rabbit pub-hotel, much-feted by foodies for its £100 taster menu. 

For the locals, the social hub is now the pebble-dashed post-war Royal British Legion hut down the road.

Those I talk to all praise what Lady Bamford has done for local jobs and the economy.

 Yet some also look back wistfully on the Kingham which won that Country Life award 21 years ago. ‘Life was different then. We had three football teams and a real community spirit,’ says Adam, a 48-year-old local dog-walker. 

‘Now it feels a bit Disneyland and my children can’t afford to live here. Still, it means jobs for local people.’

Just outside the village, I find a huge construction site. It is Daylesford’s next big thing, the reconstruction of a run-down old hotel called The Mill House, complete with bakery, alehouse, thatched cottages and 38 boutique bedrooms. 

The whole thing, say those in the know, is costing well into the tens of millions. After years of negotiation, the tireless Lady Bamford finally got planning approval seven months ago.

According to one source close to the family, this is the real reason she is selling the pub next to Jeremy Clarkson. 

‘She just wants to focus on her patch. The Three Horseshoes is 12 miles from Daylesford and it’s now no longer part of the plan.’

It’s clearly a bit awkward, though, and the sale would have been going on quietly below the media radar, had someone at the estate agents not plonked all the details onto the internet. 

‘Under no circumstances should the staff or business be contacted directly,’ say the particulars from Savills. ‘Please be discreet.’

I vow not to breathe a word when I book a £170 room, a compact ground-floor berth in an annex next to the car park.

Certainly, on the night of my stay, the dining room is nearly full, with some gentle live music (one guitar), a contented ambience and mainly couples. 

My rather sturdy smoked cod roe souffle (£12) and halibut chowder (£25) is not what you will find on the Clarkson menu. Yet, I see that this place also has Mr Clarkson’s beers on tap, so relations cannot be that bad.

It is a totally different vibe the next day when I head into Clarkson territory, starting at his Diddly Squat Farm Shop. It’s only midweek, mid-morning, yet joyless marshals in hi-vis are already directing the traffic. 

A police car is leaving just as I arrive. It’s essentially a tiny shop on one side, a large, open-sided lambing shed the other with a small bar and food counter.

It also has masses of wooden picnic seating with a glorious panoramic view for miles around. 

Many people are just happy to pick up a cup of tea and look out on the Cotswolds, always keeping an eye out for the main man. 

There is no sign of him today but fans queue for the shop and for a selfie in front of the huge yellow logo for his Clarkson’s Farm series.

For some, it’s a good spot from where to walk the dog (I have never seen so many dogs in one cafe).   

For others, it’s a pilgrimage. I meet Justin, an accountant from California, who loved Top Gear, loves Clarkson and marked this down as a mandatory call on his UK tour.

Matthias, a farmer from Norway, has come to pay homage. Reece and Jamie, who work in emergency services in Wales, have come down on a day off. 

Mike and Kayley from Wolverhampton have brought their baby on a day out.

It’s only 11am and I am struck by the number of people drinking pints of Clarkson’s Hawkstone lager. But then that’s just living the lifestyle, I suppose.

At Daylesford, you buy your £83 scented Bamford candle and £200 hand-painted chocolate hen with a soft Ibiza beach groove playing in the background.

At Diddly Squat, it’s rock music, £4.80 for a bag of fudge and £22 for a Clarkson candle saying: ‘This Smells Like My B******s.’ All a question of taste.

Later, I dine at The Farmer’s Dog, laid out like a carvery with a massive terrace. Bookings have to be made online with a £20-a-head upfront deposit (and an undertaking to hand back the table within 75 minutes). 

Mr Clarkson has lost so many Hawkstone glasses that punters are now given a free ‘Jeremy is watching – Don’t steal his pint glasses’ beermat to take home instead.

I spot him, briefly, chatting with his film crew but he does not work the room and disappears. It’s buzzing (and I am told this is a ‘quiet night’ with a mere 200 punters).

It’s also well run, with a large bar and fireside ‘snug’ area and lots of room for dogs between tables.

There are plenty of men-only groups (Top Gear legacy fans), but plenty of families, too. I note that every single member of staff is smiley, English and local – like the rigorously local food.

The grub is, I would say, workmanlike – decent portions, not overpriced but lukewarm. 

I bring two local friends, one of whom is distinctly underwhelmed by the cold poached egg on his braised ham hock starter (£9) and unable to season it (‘Jeremy doesn’t allow pepper,’ says our apologetic waitress. ‘It’s not local enough.’) 

The bubble and squeak with my gammon (£20) had solidified and I have certainly had better for half the price of my £43 bottle of Chateau Dorking.

But you know what to expect. This is a destination joint and customers like Wendy McNatt from South Carolina, and her F1-loving daughter, Whitney, 16, just love it. 

‘We only landed at 9.30 this morning and that’s made our day,’ says Wendy.

For now, at least, Mr Clarkson has struck gastro gold. One cold night this week, I found the adjacent overflow marquee rammed with a local crowd enjoying a ticket-only, pre-Cheltenham, ‘meet-the-trainers’ knees-up.

And so the Cotswold bubble just keeps on growing. The UK might be losing six pubs a week, says the British Beer & Pub Association, but not round here. 

Quite apart from the Clarkson and Bamford empires, others are doing the same. Property magnate Sir Anthony Gallagher has a local string of gastropubs, while the handsome town of Burford is being bought up piecemeal by the media tycoon, Matthew Freud.

The former son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch lives in the local stately. Having bought The Bull coaching inn, Mr Freud has dropped the definite article and runs Bull as a funky, art-filled boutique hotel. 

He has since done the same with The Highway Inn (now Highway), a hotel-cum-tapas bar where I book a tiny attic room for £117.

Over the road, he has bought up an entire alley of shops, called Christmas Court, but has yet to announce his plans for them (no reply when I seek a comment). The local talk is of a spa.

If it all sounds like a plotline from Wives Like Us, the brilliant new satirical bestseller from (Cotswolds-based) Plum Sykes, the locals are not complaining, in part because, unlike a faceless corporation, all these famous investors do live round the corner. Clarkson’s stock is high in Burford.

‘You might get a few died-in-the-wool oldies grumbling but we need our tourism and we need to keep it upmarket,’ says John White, local town councillor and a former Mayor of Burford for ten years. 

‘We’re proud of all our independent businesses and people like Clarkson and Freud are bringing footfall to the town.’

He is particularly amused that the Clarkson’s Farm show is always painting the star in mortal combat with the local council when, in fact, he says that Mr Clarkson knows exactly how to play the system. 

‘We’re amazed at the speed Jeremy gets things done,’ he laughs.

‘He even got a lay-by closed. That takes some doing.’

Meanwhile, as the helicopters and supercars descend for the racing at Cheltenham next week, the locals and the Cotswold old guard still have a few untouched gathering spots.

A regular racegoer fondly recalls dropping into the The King’s Head at Bledington and finding one bar full of bookies and the other feeding the Princess Royal.

Landlord Archie Orr-Ewing reflects on how things have changed. ‘When we came here 25 years ago, there was only one other pub in the whole area doing food!’ he says, chuckling at today’s gastronomic landscape.

‘But we still have the same Cheltenham regulars we had back then. This is our springboard for the whole year. Other parts of the country might have to wait until Easter. Here in the Cotswolds, we get this wonderful head start.’

And they’re under starter’s orders …