Hamish Champ: Binge drinking, branded glassware and the £5.80 pint

You'll no doubt have seen the press coverage last week of what has been described as Britain's most expensive pint.

A couple of newspapers found out that the Coach & Horses in Soho, Central London - Norman 'You're Barred!' Balon's former gaff - was selling Leffe, the Belgian beer, for a whopping £5.80 a pint.

One of the newspapers, the London Evening Standard​, interviewed two customers who were a bit miffed at the price, even though a) they admitted bar staff had warned them that it was an expensive speciality beer which was normally sold in half pint glasses and b) the Standard​ 'fessed up it had bought them the 'offending' drink.

The newspaper featured a photograph of the pair holding what appeared to be an ordinary pint of lager; no sign of branded glassware - mainly because (as far as I understand) Leffe doesn't make pint glasses, only halves. It's not a beer to be drunk in pints, after all.

I know the Standard​ was simply making a point and it's true that beer is bloomin' expensive in many London establishments, but sell the stuff for rock-bottom prices and the headlines scream about the state of 'binge-drinking boozed-up Britain'. Sell it for a high price (one often determined by the pub's owner) and it's 'rip-off Britain'.

The chest-beating outrage of some media organisations over the price of alcohol is hypocritical, to say the least. Charges of double standards are sometimes also levelled at those brewers who slag off supermarkets for undermining the Great British Pub™ and in the next breath tell us how well their products are doing in the off-trade.

My out-of-office-hours chums couldn't give a monkey's about such things, however. They see visits to the pub on the one hand and the buying and consuming of alcohol at home on the other as catering for entirely different situations. They are prepared to pay a premium for a pint in a pub for the experience - although increasingly this is accompanied by a sharp intake of breath - while looking for a cheap beer deal when having friends round for a barbecue.

Nor can my mates understand why I get into such high dudgeon over the issue of branded glassware. If they got served a pint of Heineken or Peroni in a Guinness or a Harp glass they wouldn't bat an eyelid. Me, I'd have a cow, man.

It's probably an OCD thing on my part - which could explain why I line up books on my shelf in the manner of a symmetrical hill, short ones either side with the ones towards the middle getting gradually taller. But I reckon if someone's gone to the effort of producing a damn fine beer the least I can do is drink it out of the appropriate vessel.

Speaking of the cost of a pint and the issue of branded glassware, I was in Paris this past weekend for the Heineken rugby final and if you think London is an expensive place for a night out you want to have a few drinks in that beautiful city. The equivalent of a pint works out in some bars at close to 10 quid a go.

That's coronary-inducing pricing in anyone's book. Plus Parisian bar staff can be a bit on the surly side.

But hey, at least they serve the stuff in the right bloody glass…