Battling Aunty's anti-beer bias

Dave Bailey is a hero for our times. He runs the HardKnott Brewery in Millom, Cumbria, and he is a passionate advocate for British beer, to such an extent that he has lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the independent media regulator, against the BBC for the manner in which the corporation ignores beer.

Bailey describes beer as Britain's national drink and he is appalled by the way in which the BBC studiously ignores beer and gives so much coverage to wine — "primarily an imported drink".

"At HardKnott we make an eclectic range of beers, some regular cask beers you might find in the pub, but also some exotic, full-flavoured beers, especially designed for food," he says. "I wouldn't mind so much if I was just one little brewer in a remote corner of Cumbria, but there are many tens of worthy brewers who are passionate about special beers.

"Many of these breweries are running their own beer-and-food matching events in conjunction with some of the best food-led pubs and even Michelin-star restaurants. Yet Saturday Kitchen, cited in our complaint, almost never mentions beer."

The Saturday Kitchen, presented by chef James Martin, features different dishes every week and calls on experts to recommend the best wines to match the food on offer. As Bailey says, beer scarcely gets a look in, even though Martin is on the record as saying that when he cooks for himself at home he enjoys the Belgian golden ale Duvel with his food.

Bailey is especially enraged over the way in which the BBC ignores beer at a time when the British economy is "struggling to recover and the BBC has a responsibility to support British beverages rather than imported wine". He points out that while the BBC is funded by the taxpayer, it is "deliberately and recklessly damaging the British economy by its unreasonable and deliberate rejection of beer as a beverage to drink with food.

The vast majority of beer consumed in Britain is brewed here using British-grown ingredients.

"Drinking alcohol when eating is a much more responsible activity than heavy drinking sessions when no food is consumed.

The BBC, in omitting beer from one of its prime-time food programmes, is alienating beer drinkers from the healthy activity of moderate drinking while eating. The BBC is therefore being reckless with the nation's health."

In one area, the BBC is always keen to promote beer. A few weeks ago, the Royal College of Psychiatrists produced a report — roundly dismissed as windy nonsense — saying that people over the age of 65 should drink no more than one unit of alcohol a day.

The BBC leapt on the report like a slavering dog. Here was yet another excuse to attack the consumption of alcohol. And how did the TV bulletins illustrate the piece? You've guessed — with the sight of a pint of beer being pulled in a pub. It's the same piece of stock film the Beeb always trots out on these occasions and it's lazy, sloppy journalism. If wrinklies are restricted to one unit of alcohol a day, it's unlikely beer will be their drink of choice. Pass the port, grandma.

I watched with keen anticipation the recent BBC2 series by Evan Davis on Britain's new industries. His theme was that the British were still highly innovative and, contrary to perceived wisdom, still making things. Would he, I wondered, mention brewing, an industry enjoying an impressive revival?

There are close to 800 breweries operating in Britain today — that's the highest number for more than 60 years. Beer volumes may have fallen, but, as Dave Bailey points out, the range and diversity of beer styles has never been greater.

But not a drop of beer passed Davis's lips. He focused on computer technology and firms supplying the arms industry. As an example of an industry that has survived and changed, he singled out the Lever Brothers soap factory on Merseyside that grew to become Britain's biggest manufacturer early in the 20th century and turned itself into the giant Unilever.

He could instead have chosen Bass, a company in Burton-on-Trent that, by the end of the 19th century, was the world's biggest brewer, producing more than one million barrels a year. Bass, like Lever, has changed. The name no longer exists except as a label, but brewing continues on the Burton site.

Molson Coors not only produces a large amount of Carling in Burton, but has helped rejuvenate the cask-beer sector by investing £1m in the new William Worthington Brewery in the National Brewery Centre.

That small success story could have been used by Davis to trace the way in which an old British industry has transformed itself over the past 20 years into a vibrant part of the modern economy, providing jobs for thousands and millions in duty and VAT for the Government. But, of course, brewing did not feature in the series: bullets before beer, you could say.

So good luck to Dave Bailey and his Ofcom complaint. I'm off to a beer event in a pub in Oxfordshire run by Oak Taverns. I'm told around 50 tickets have been sold, so there should be a good attendance. But somehow I doubt the BBC will turn up.