Pub Bitch: This time it's in a dead stoat - Scots gimmick-mongers' latest wheeze
Draining the weasel
Those madcap people at BrewDog, the maverickTM Scottish ale producer, are well known for their wacky PR stunts, but they may fall foul of the authorities with their latest move — not that opprobrium from officialdom ever put them off their stride in the past. The brewer plans to open a bar in Aberdeen and is offering a lifetime's supply of its beers to anyone bonkers enough to have the BrewDog logo tattooed somewhere about their person. Crazy, eh? Blimey, we should coco. And as part of its ongoing and frankly rather dull campaign to brew ever-stronger beers that no-one can drink, BrewDog has come up with a 55 per cent ale that's poured from a bottle, get this, that's housed in the corpse of a squirrel. Or a stoat. You couldn't make it up. And believe me, I'm not…
Keep it up
It's not just the Scottish brewing fraternity who can do bonkers PR. Egger, an Austrian brewing concern, has apparently come up with a beer imbued with a by-product of the cheese manufacturing process that prevents male drinkers suffering from that most ignoble of drink-related let-downs: brewer's droop. The beer, Walder Senn, contains whey, is lower in alcohol, and according to Egger promises a "positive and healthy" response in the male trouser department, even after a skinful of the stuff. Head brewer Heinrich Hommel told local reporters the aim was to use the best bits of the cheese production process but without the cheesy taste, namely "the lactose and the vitamins which keep men healthy", he added. Without any irony whatsoever…
Caption competition result
My request last week for readers to submit a caption for the photo of Prince Harry accepting a bottle Mahiki rum at a polo tournament prompted a veritable landslide of entries. After chortling my way through the piles of email printouts I can announce the winner is one Keith Williams, whose caption (see pic on right-hand side). Keith, if you care to contact us with your details a bottle of Mahiki rum will be winging its way to you as soon as we can get them to answer the phone…
Never too young
Pub Bitch would like to offer its congratulations to Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West, and — maybe, perhaps, who knows? — minister for pubs 'in waiting', after the birth of Ava, his third daughter, the other week. Altogether, one, two, three… aaaaaaaah. A 'tweeter' who regularly updates his followers on what he's up to - and no shirker when it comes to highlighting his devotion to the on-trade — Mulholland last week tweeted the world thus: "Took the kids to a pub garden play area. So Ava has been to the pub at less than three days old. Well, I am Chair of the Save the Pub Group!" However, he failed to mention where the pub was. Or whether it was a tied establishment or a freehouse. Was it, could it have been, even an Enterprise Inns pub? Seriously, I think we ought to know…
Smoking ban wrecks marriages
News that the Czech Republic has demanded that the capital's pubs and bars have signs outside indicating whether they are smoking establishments or non-smoking ones will be of huge interest to those of my readers who like to have a few quiet puffs round the back of the fire escape. At least Prague bars can choose either way, although one interested party had this to say about the situation: "In the countryside, if men can't smoke at the pub they will stay home, their wives will be on them to fix things, and marriages would suffer," 'joked' Pavel Hlinka, president of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants. As justifications for not imposing a smoking ban, Hlinka's is without doubt the best we've ever heard.
