The clutching of pearls as Marlow eviscerates a sector for daring to be commercial and make a profit, from a paper that is supposedly pro-business and whose readers are no doubt regular pub customers, would be laughable if it didn’t make me want to cry.
The pub sector is under siege on so many fronts; inflationary pressures, cost-of-living challenges, utilities spikes, rising wage demands and then, on top of all that, disproportionate taxation which is seriously undermining the viability of a sector that has barely got back on its feet since the pandemic.
Marlow’s snide, snobby hit-piece on the managed pub sector, gleefully celebrating its closures, completely neglects the real people involved - real jobs, real communities, all of which suffer when their local pub closes down, regardless of whether the Telegraph editorial team would like to have a pint in it or not.
Yes, I know he’s a columnist paid to voice controversial opinions. But headlines matter, and his words chip away at the battered confidence of a sector which has fought hard to recover its financial viability.
Diverse demographic
His dismissal of customer service as “not even thought about at all”, is an insult to the often young front-line team members looking to get their start in life, who have the unenviable task of serving prickly customers like Mr Marlow.
Pubs represent a diverse portfolio of experiences to suit a wide range of customers. You might not like the style of a small section of that market, and not every pub is to my own personal taste. But to suggest they deserve to be closed down is beyond the pale.
I appreciate The Telegraph is probably not the paper to go to for a finger on the pulse of modern culture, but to name check a pub chain (Scream) that ceased to exist more than a decade ago is quite telling. When was the last time you actually went to a pub Mr Marlow, the mid-noughties?
While singling out Greene King, he admits he’s yet to visit many of their pubs in his own area, never mind the 2,700 around the country, freely admitting his own ignorance from the very outset, while tarring the entire estate with his poisoned brush.
Describing the “commercialisation of the great British pub” as “one of the tragedies of our times” not only demonstrates a lack of proportionality but seems to lament the fact that pubs should dare to consider making money.
Dynamic sector
He slams the “corporate Frankensteins” who have become nothing more than “cynical moneymaking schemes”, but disregards just how tough it is to break even with a pub business.
If he were even a casual student of pub history, he would know the brewing monopolies of the 1980s, and the callous treatment of licenses by the big pubcos in the noughties, were far more egregious examples of rampant commercialism in the sector than anything we see today.
Indeed, the sector is a far more diverse, innovative and dynamic than the bland, corporate vision he dreams up.
But the biggest irony of the piece, after several hundred words of waffle complaining about cookie-cutter pubs lacking individuality, is that he goes on to heap praise on JD Wetherspoon (JDW) - a chain which has arguably set the template for all of the things he bitterly complains about.
If his benchmark for pub greatness is JDW – which for the record, I admire as a great, well-organised, well-run business - then perhaps Mr Marlow needs to broaden his experience and get out of the house a little more.
His endorsement of the company may well have more to do with chairman Sir Tim Martin’s pro-Brexit position, making him a cosy bedfellow with editorial stance of The Telegraph.