You can manage

From single parents to school-leavers, the pub industry provides a career.

Becky Blackmore, the Old Post Office, Herts​

Becky Blackmore, manager of the Old Post Office in Roydon, Hertfordshire, started young in the pub industry. She was only 16 when she was hired by Whitbread as a glass collector for the Office in her home city of Swansea.

By the time she was old enough, she was put behind the bar and was made up to bar supervisor at 19 - still working part time at the pub.

At 21, after picking up a business degree, she transferred to the Swansea Hogshead where in two and a half years she rose to the rank of duty manager, then assistant manager before a brief stint at the brand's Gloucester outlet.

Her career was interrupted by the upheaval at Whitbread which led to the pubs being sold to Laurel. "With all the changes I decided to leave and try something else," she said.

Becky then joined Barracuda, one of the newer companies in the industry, taking the job of assistant manager at one of London's most famous music venues, the World's End in Finsbury Park. Her year there included relief management at other pubs in preparation for becoming a manager - and two months ago she took over the Old Post Office.

"I love it," she said. "This is a big entertainment venue, it takes 400 people and it has a young and vibrant atmosphere.

"It's very long hours, the job's your life, but I enjoy it so much. The money's good when you consider that there is no rent or bills to pay, but most of all I get the satisfaction of running a successful business."

Becky has taken her National Certificate for Licensees with Barracuda and "there's a lot more to come", she says. "I want to run even busier, bigger pubs."

Beverley Williams, the Two Poplars, Wokingham​

One of the advantages of living above the shop - as most pub managers do - is that you're always close to home. And one of the less likely results of this is that single parents are beginning to find that running a pub is the ideal career for them.

Beverley Williams manages the Two Poplars in Wokingham, Berkshire, and lives upstairs with her seven-year-old daughter Carly.

"It's good to know that when I'm at work I'm so close to home, and I can organise my work so I can spend time with Carly," she said. "She likes it here too. We have a private garden where she keeps her rabbit."

Yet it almost didn't work out like that.

Beverley had her sights set on the pub industry from an early age. "My father was a club steward and I had always wanted to run my own pub," she said. "Although when I first worked behind the bar I never realised there would be so much to it!"

She married at 28 and together with her husband, a butcher by trade, decided to get a pub. That first attempt, however, fell through when they split up shortly after the birth of Carly.

Beverley kept in touch with the industry, however, getting a job with a fruit machine company. She also visited her local, Greene King's Prince of Wales in Hampton Court, and told the manager there about her dream of running a pub.

"He offered me a job as his assistant manager," she said. "He said I had the passion, and that was all I needed.

"The money wasn't very good but I lived rent-free above the pub and I was put on courses and gained experience by acting as relief manager when Mike was on holiday."

She also helped develop the business by bringing in entertainment and when the manager handed his notice in he prepared Beverley to take over.

"In his last few weeks he filled my head with everything I needed to know," she said. "While I was in charge I had really good sales but Greene King was really looking for a couple for the pub."

The couple arrived and Beverley continued to work for them, taking her National Certificate for Licensees. Then Greene King gave her the chance to run her own pub, the Redan in Wokingham.

"My first thought was, where's Wokingham? And when I went to see the pub it was full of horrible men, not a woman in the bar, and it also had a drugs problem.

"I thought it must be some kind of punishment. But it was in a great location, right in the middle of town, and Greene King was going to spend £45,000 on it, so I took it.

"I was determined to clean it up. I changed everything and made it women-friendly by doing things like putting flowers on the tables. Drug dealers don't like that. It puts them off."

Beverley increased takings from £2,500 a week to £9,000 and the Redan was named Greene King's pub of year for the best return on investment.

She was there for a year and a half and left in 2000 having "done all I could - I had outgrown it".

Then along came the Two Poplars in the same town. Greene King was spending £230,000 on this one and it was an even bigger challenge for Beverley - it was the new home of the undesirables she had driven out of the Redan with her flower power.

"But I took the bull by the horns," she said. "It's a massive pub and we've been doing a roaring trade since we reopened last November.

"It's been harder to make the kind of bonuses I did at the Redan but I got a nice pay rise with the move, I'm now on over £25,000, and we're doing fun nights to get people in and we're getting there.

"I wouldn't want to give up this business," she concluded. "Some of the jobs I've had you didn't want to get up in the mornings, but I love this trade."

Lucy Hallett, Saracen's Head, Dunstable​

Lucy Hallett's parents were horrified when she announced she was giving up an respectable career in retail to work in pubs. But they must be proud of her now.

The 24-year-old is managing her first pub, the Saracen's Head in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, after just 10 weeks with Laurel Pub Company following a record-breaking performance in the group's training programme.

Yet she started out with a different career in mind. After training and working as a graphic designer for four years she left to manage a sports shop. There was something missing, though. The fun.

"I work harder at the pub and the hours are longer but it's much more social and friendly," she said.

Lucy trained at the Laurel Academy where she won an award for excellence after producing "the best portfolio of work they had ever seen" in a shorter time than anyone else who has taken the company's diploma.

She was helped, she thinks, by her management background and experience in London bars - plus some old fashioned common sense.

Then she trained in a pub as assistant to another young Laurel manager, Sue Newfield at Hanrahans in Maidstone, Kent. "That was a very big house with a 100-cover restaurant and loads of work, but I learned so much from Sue," said Lucy.

Her first management post at the Saracen's, a sports bar with young people and loud music, is a temporary one, and she hopes to move back to a pub in the Kent area, the part of the country she knows best.

"I'm after a bigger pub, maybe one with a cocktail bar," she said. "A bigger site is more money and it's more fun. There are big rewards in this job but you have got to prove yourself."

Gil Cooray, JJ Moons, West London​

They reckon the average life expectancy of a manager in the same pub is two or three years. Gil Cooray is still running JJ Moons in Ruislip Manor, West London, 12 years on and has no plans to move.

Gil's career in the licensed trade began in 1981 when, after seven years as a bookmaker, he decided to take a gamble himself and switch to pubs.

"A friend and I both ran good betting shops but we thought it was a dead-end," he explained. "His father was a well-known publican who