Chris Maclean: sorry about the TV slur

I've had my knuckles wrapped. Quite firmly and quite deservedly. I did wrong.

The blog I recently wrote about pubs in this town with televisions was generalising and offensive. Understandably those licensees with televisions saw what I had said and took offence. They haven't quite taken to building effigies of me and burning them in the street but I'd quite understand if they did.

This is all very unfortunate and, at a time when licensees have enough on their plate with all the demands made on them, to have an idiot making generalised statements like that is wholly unnecessary.

But as I have walked around the town visiting licensees to apologise I have come to realise that my frustration and anger at the role of televisions in pubs entirely stems from the deplorable situation here before I took over. The televisions were on constantly and there was no control. Worse still, and I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties my predecessor had, the situation had escalated to such a level that there was a state of war with the neighbours whereby my licence continues to be restricted and my neighbour, an innocent party in the process, also has similar restraint on his licence.

I think, because of that, I had come to believe televisions represent the bad parts of pubs.

But I do them a disservice. Televisions have become a vital part of our social scene. As terrestrial television continues to lose the rights to events the only conceivable way for many of watching premier events is collectively in a pub. Realistically the only way my nephew could watch the cricket is in a pub. It's as simple as that.

And while I have created a mindset of football fans being rowdy and troublesome the truth is that, in general, while they may holler and shout at tense moments, they are pretty much a placid bunch around here.

So I unreservedly apologise to the licensees and football fans if I caused them offence. I didn't mean to.

But I'm not putting the tellies back in here.