What I love about pubs: Nick Yates

Nick Yates of Ormskirk, Lancashire tells us what he loves about pubs.

For me, a good pub has a mixture of accessibility and exclusivity. You want to be able to treasure your regular haunt as a place you discovered, but it's also got to be somewhere you can see a cross-section of people.

The Forth Hotel in Newcastle fits this bill perfectly.Here you get trendy rockers who come for the excellent jukebox, university academics sitting down for a muse in the relaxed atmosphere and foodies for whom the draw is, well, the great food.

The Forth may be 30 seconds from the bar in which Michael Caine drank in the Newcastle-set crime film Get Carter, but it is as far away from that gritty Northern drinking dive as you can get.

Shortly after I came across the tucked-away pub in the early noughties, it closed when the building was fire-damaged. But the accident was a blessing in disguise from the pub gods. The Forth soon re-opened with a whole new image - a brighter, more stylish affair.

Now you can settle down with a pint of real ale for a game on the retro Pac-Man machine. Just remember to watch for the rocker and the academic sitting either side of you.