Pub Bitch: No beating around the bush
No beating around the bush
The following reminds me of the old saying that begins with the line "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…" I'll ignore my own typographical howlers for now and show you how amusing such errors can be, albeit in a Benny Hill/Roy 'Chubby' Brown kinda way… Last week an edition of City AM, the free financial newspaper handed out at railway stations, carried a lengthy interview with Marston's chief executive Ralph Findlay in which he waxed lyrical about the issues affecting both brewing and on-trade sectors. Speaking highly of Marston's own pub building programme he naturally touched on the issue of closures, but we're pretty sure he didn't say it like this: "There are around 55,000 pubs in the UK and most commentators agree that we are over-pubed." Oh how we laughed…
Another PR coup for Bojo
Ah, good old Boris Johnson. The Tory leader of the Greater London Assembly and maybe, possibly, future leader of the Conservative Party was "meeting his public" on the not-so-mean streets of Chiswick in West London last week when he was pounced on outside Fuller's brewery by a man dressed as a pint of London Pride. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, Bozzer was happy to pump the hand of the large inflatable thing for a few moments, but in the spirit of Shakey Hand Man from TV's Banzai it was a full 30 seconds before he could extricate himself from the situation to press other less demanding flesh…
Who's counting?
Most hacks know that you are asking for trouble when you proclaim anything to be "the biggest", "the oldest", "the greatest" etc. That's why it's always wise to throw in a "probably" or "believed to be" when writing about such claims. So we should have known we were asking for trouble when we reported that a couple of darts players had broken a world record by playing non-stop for 29 hours and 52 minutes. It turns out that James Footit and Thomas Waterfield of the Nags Head in Helpringham, Lincolnshire, might not get the Guinness Book's seal of approval for, according to our sources, they may have missed out by a mere eight minutes. That is, er, they probably, possibly, could have missed out. We wait to hear from other marathon darts players to confirm….
We're in the book
In a presentation not a million miles from what M&B's chief executive Adam Fowle outlined back in January, John Lovering, the group's chairman, calmly delivered the findings of the company's latest in a line of strategic reviews last week to an expectant audience of City analysts. However his composure was somewhat tested by the number of times he was asked where-oh-where M&B would actually source its much highlighted leased sites, the ones in edge-of-town retail parks and the like. One young besuited pup who piped up to ask Lovering a variant on this question - the fourth time it had been put to him during the session - was given short shrift: "Why don't you look in a copy of the Yellow Pages? They usually have retail parks in there."
Calling card
Wearing a number of different hats can cause its problems, as Kate Nicholls of the ALMR, IPC, etc, ad nauseum can surely testify. On a recent visit to Publican Towers our Kate needed to rummage through her handbag to locate the swipe card to let her out of the building and back into civilisation, wot with us being a security-conscious lot an' all. Instead of the piece of plastic she was given on her arrival Kate tried to swipe out with a card from one of the numerous organisations she represents, without success. It turns out that the card for the Lap Dancing Association can't get you out of our building, but we bet it can open a few other doors...
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