Florence Pugh has cemented a place for herself in the A-list with a string of critical and box office smashes: ranging from Midsommar, her turn as Yelena Belova in the MCU and, most recently, in Christopher Nolan’s intense atomic drama Oppenheimer.
But it seems not all is well elsewhere in the Pugh family. Her dad, Clinton Pugh, has just given a bizarre interview with Sky News while wearing some kind of hideous necktie. During it, he blamed the closure of his restaurant Tarifa on Oxford council’s “low traffic neighbourhood” policy, which is intended to encourage cycling and public transport.
Pugh concludes that “they are acting like dictators!”, which feels a little over the top considering he’s talking about a traffic management scheme.
But there may be more to this story than meets the eye. A reply points out that Pugh’s restaurant is 200 meters away from the Magdalen College (filled with hungry students), that there’s a bus stop opposite the restaurant and that there’s a (presumably council-installed) bike rack outside. It’s also notable that in this two-minute clip alone we see a good amount of pedestrians, cars and cyclists passing his front door. Maybe he’s just bad at running a restaurant?
Five minutes of digging also indicates Pugh’s claims that a recent council policy is forcing him out of the restaurant game don’t quite hold up. After all, in 2019 he announced that he was done with restaurants, telling a local website “I don’t want to think about restaurants anymore. It’s a seven day a week job so I’m going to put them on the market”.
Locals responding to the interview have also pointed out that Pugh has previously campaigned to close roads around his restaurant, which now feels a bit hypocritical.
We can only feel a little sorry for Florence Pugh here. Embarrassing family members are never fun, but seeing them ranting and raving on national news must be excruciating.
Published: Jul 31, 2023 05:16 am