Guest editors Morrissey and Fox interview Mike Benner
With an expanding range of beers of their own and their North Yorkshire pub taking off, Neil Morrissey and chef Richard Fox already know quite a lot about the pub industry.
But the stars of Channel 4 series Neil Morrissey's Risky Business didn't know quite so much about publishing the industry's leading magazine - until they came into The Publican's office this week.
Gamely taking up our invitation to take over the reins on The Publican they took part in a range of activities including chairing meetings and checking pages.
But top of the agenda was their interview with Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) chief executive Mike Benner.
From the changing role of CAMRA to whether Benner can really Morris dance, they wanted the answers - and they got them!
For a full gallery of Morrissey and Fox's time in The Publican office scroll to the end of this story.
This is the full transcript of the edited interview which appears in this week's Publican.
Q - NEIL: Why, when I'm going to meet a man so high up in CAMRA, do I expect him to come Morris dancing into the room with hardly any teeth and a big beard, playing the Hurdy Gurdy?
A - Mike: Well I would say that CAMRA is a broad church, and those people exist of course. A lot of people like that enjoy drinking real ale and going to good pubs so we do have members like that but we also have members who are clean shaven and work in the city and do a lot of other things, so it's a broad church which covers everyone.
Q - RICHARD: But do you think that image is perhaps detrimental to expanding your membership and promoting the message to a wider range of drinkers? Is there a risk that CAMRA is just preaching to the converted at the moment, and how do you address this?
A - Mike: I used to worry about this a few years ago, and I used to sit and think what can we do to try and change our image and re-invent ourselves as something that arguably we're not. And actually I don't worry about it anymore. I think that CAMRA, like real ale and like community pubs, is a great British institution. If people see it in a particular way then so be it. Does it cause problems in getting younger people and women interested in real ale? Possibly, but we do our bit through beer festivals and other ways to try and encourage these people to get involved. And actually about a quarter of our membership are women, and the numbers of younger people under the age of 25 becoming members is also increasing year on year. So it's kind of going in the right direction.
Q - NEIL: I think there is one small shortcut that we can do, because I think the very phrase 'beer festival' is again steeped in tradition. Couldn't we change that to 'beer tasting'? It's much more of a sort of modern word suggesting that when you go, you're actually going to taste the beer. The term festival gives the wrong impression of what these events actually are, whereas a 'tasting' feels more gastronomic.
A - Mike: I quite like the word 'festival' because it suggests a celebration and that's what it is really. What we are trying to do is celebrate diversity and a range of different styles and flavours which is what real ale is all about. All of our beer festivals hold beer tastings because we hold competitions - and I know that you have been to one or two - so we do that as well.
Q - RICHARD: Has the remit of CAMRA changed since its inception? There's no question that CAMRA has saved traditional cask ale, but now obviously that job has been done. Microbreweries are now exponentially growing so does that alter CAMRA's mission if you like?
A - Mike: No, fundamentally CAMRA was set up to promote real ale and decent community pubs - because that's where you drink real ale - and consumer rights. We're not a trade organisation we represent drinkers, and we care about the people who use pubs, and I think that's always been the case for the last 35 years. Lots of campaigns have come and gone but of course there is still this ongoing struggle. I mean yes there are loads more microbreweries but of course a lot of those microbreweries find it difficult to get their beers into pubs and into supermarkets. There is still that big challenge, and it's still the case that the market is still dominated by global lager brands and so we still want to build interest in real ales, that's why we exist.
Q - RICHARD: The majority of those lager brands are drunk in high-street bars. Now obviously you are promoting real ale in traditional pubs, but by focusing on those style bars and targeting that market drinker, could you not widen membership and demand for cask ale? Those people used to drink in the traditional village pubs and are now getting into taxis and cars and drinking in high street bars - could you reverse that trend?
A - Mike: There's work to be done, but I think it's also important to recognise how consumers associate with real ale. They don't associate it with being a drink that you drink in a high street bar, they associate it with relatively quiet social occasions. It's not for knocking down your neck and getting drunk on a Friday night, it's a sociable drink. So it's great if you are going to get a range of drinks in high street bars because it encourages people to try them, but actually I think now consumers are moving back towards what they see as quite comfortable products like real ale which have got some real provenance. Real ales are about where they are brewed and the people who brew them, they have that story behind them and they benefit both the local economy and the local community. People are very much coming back to that on food and drink. So whilst premium lagers still dominate the market in terms of volume, the whole beer market is declining by about eight per cent, whereas for real ale the decline is slowing almost to zero so it's actually approaching growth. And certainly if you look at premium bottled ales there is huge growth there, and the opportunity there really shows that demand exists for premium ales.
Q - NEIL: Does CAMRA speak up about the way that supermarkets are trading their beer at the moment i.e. that it's cheaper than water in some cases?
A - Mike: To put the whole thing in context I think there is a major threat facing the industry in this country and that is that the power of the health lobby is trying to move towards reducing the average consumption of alcohol across the population. I think that is a bad thing, as that's saying if I drink a couple of pints of beer eventually I might feel demonised by it in the same way smoking has been demonised. So I'm very much in favour of the idea of socially responsible drinking - in other words drinking beer in a pub with people that you know. I think that's good for personal wellbeing in terms of de-stressing at the end of a busy day and it's got lots of advantages for the community too. So I regard drinking in community pubs as the way forward and as the solution to problems with binge drinking and all the rest. What we are starting to see now is that supermarkets are able to undercut pub prices so much, selling alcohol as a loss leader, which is deeply irresponsible and is causing a shift away from drinking in pubs to drinking at home or on the street. People are sat in their arm chairs watching TV rather than around a pub table enjoying alcohol sociably. So are we in favour of minimum pricing being brought in? Absolutely, I think it's a direct fix for a problem that is not being dealt with properly by the supermarket bosses. If they are not going to deal with it then we need a government which is going to act responsibly. So what we need to see is government policies that drive people back into community pubs - not just any pub but community pubs, because not all pubs are the same and in my view community pubs bring together people of different backgrounds
