A howling error

For the 560 people playing Heads and Tails at the Morning Advertiser Pub of the Year awards last week, Snifter has just one thing to say. Sorry! It was the Slaughtered Lamb. For the rest of you, let's explain. Conducting the game from the stage, Snifter hadasked if the pub in the film An American Werewolf in London was called the Slaughtered Lamb ­ and confidently told the audience: "No, it was actually the Slaughtered Pig." The mutterings from the floor he ignored cheerfully, and eventually Graham Turner, chief executive of Unique, ended up with a jeroboam of Champagne, which he generously passed on very quickly to David and Helen Dent, winners of the Business Development Pub of the Year, sponsored by Unique. Not a few people came up to Snifter afterwards and told him the error of his ways. Snifter, being Snifter, refused to believe them: there was no way his treasured pub quiz book could be wrong. Next day, though, a chastened Snifter had to admit his textbook had indeed let him down. Never again will he swear by anything printed in Taiwan. The only good thing to come from the cock-up was that it accelerated the Heads and Tails dramatically. So many people were scythed down when they put their hands on their heads for the Slaughtered Lamb that the game was over far quicker than normal. And more than £3,200 was raised for the Society of Licensed Victuallers ­ which, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.