Pubs of the Shire
Welcome! An Introduction to Pubs of the Shire, chatting about pubs, dead pubs, beer and beyond, Cheers!
Pubs of the Shire
David Jesudason, Desi Dude
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This episodes guest is David Jesudason - an award winning freelance writer and journalist, writing about beer, pubs and their social history, including multiculturalism and desi pubs, a fusion of British & Indian cultures.
We’ll take a metaphorical national express and visit Hartlepool, Leeds, Dunstable and beyond! This episode covers giant connect four, rock stars in Sinclair c5s and so much more…
Warning! May contain profanity!
Recorded at the Robin Hood pub in St Albans.
Links:
https://davidjesudason.substack.com/
Instagram @daviddesipubs
Hello, I'm Lloyd, and welcome to episode three already of Hobbes of the Show. This episode's guest is lady to Jesse Darwin, an award-winning freelancer, writer and journalist, writing about the episode of their social history, including multiculturalism and designs. And visit hardly called Leeds and Hunter and beyond. This episode covers joined connect for rock stars in single C Vives and so much more. We met up in the camera award-winning Robin Hood Harvey Albans, a free house which had a Harvey's brewery showcase, plus a jukebox, piano, barbilades, and basket or so fun to be had there then. Over the century, St. Albans has had 90 pubs and currently still has 30. We talk about the Duchess of York pub and music venue in Leeds, which was demolished in 2000, but hosted many bands, including Nirvana, Oasis, Blur and Cold Plate and MFU. Hello, we're at the Robin Hood Pub in St. Albans, and I'm here to meet David Jesu Darsen, writer, journalist, uh Desi Pub expert, and many other things. Hello. Hi, thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_02Very happy to be here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Tell us a bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_02Yes, I I've um been a journalist for about 20 years, uh, freelance for about five years as a sort of writer journalist, uh, author uh of a book called Desi Pubs, which are British Indian pubs, uh, which is published in 2023 and uh been numerous awards, been nominated for, featured on Radio 4's food programme, uh, you know, they're like looking at the legacy of it. So I guess that's what I'm most famous for. Uh, but I have written uh regularly for Pellicle, Vittles, The Guardian, Beauty Culture.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant. Right. So to begin with, have you got a favourite beer or a current beer or all-time beer? That's a hard question.
SPEAKER_02So I think it's really difficult in this day and age, isn't it, with the amount of beers that are an offer, different kind of beer styles. Um, I'm grew up in a place where green king was like very like uh all the pub nearly but were green king, but as my dad used to drink Green King IPA. Right. I still do. I find it like unbelievable we can go weather spoons have it for under two pounds, yeah. It's usually really well conditioned, and but I what I find it's interesting that he's much maligned by a lot of people who don't like it. Yeah, there's a bit of a stigma somehow. Yeah, it's like I think it's like but I think when it comes to the sort of tradition of those kind of late 20th century, sorry, late 19th century, early 20th century IPAs, then that is as near to as the style as you're gonna get, maybe very low ABV, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's no flounce with them, they're just what they are. I think so. I think they're in a good way.
SPEAKER_02I think it's a heritage beer. Yeah, um, yeah, but I don't really understand, I guess it's it's not trendy. No, it's it's like very and it and people find it very difficult to understand because you put it against uh a modern, not necessarily an I, but like a modern British pale ale, yeah, or something like that, or even a bitter, then it's it's a completely different thing, isn't it? Yeah, I guess it's a like a traditional flavour against a contemporary flavour, if that's for one of the but but my sort of styles like I like currently are sort of um big cask head, yeah, uh and pay pale ale's are like um you know I don't think that like a drink a pale classic pale ale that I was just really enjoying are the ones that Malisons do, they're a brewery in sort of West Yorkshire, maybe leads. Oh right. Um and they have that kind of you know, you get a paleo like yours, yours is a slightly cloudy one, where yeah, there's like very clear ones, like you know, and they have like very interesting, like um hot you know, mobile hops or whatever, like new world hops, and they have those kind of passion fruit like you know, like that's kind of my wheelhouse.
SPEAKER_01And I suppose like the water source makes possibly makes a difference as well, whether it's like that's local spring water or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_02So oh yeah, so so when it yeah, when it comes to the payloads, it's it's supposedly suited softer waters, right? So you don't have to nudge the pH too much in those directions. I mean, in theory it shouldn't make too much of difference in modern brewing, no, but yeah, I definitely think it's yeah, you know, that you you can tell where if you get like uh uh even a lager from like these kind of like soft water areas that you that they yeah they they film all cleaner, yeah, you know, like less less less nudgy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it must have make a difference. I mean I thought you didn't sort of buy into that all locally sourced what bacon spring or whatever, but yeah, no, I do do buy into that though.
SPEAKER_02So that brings me on to have you got an all-time favourite brewery or a current brewery that you're sort of enamoured with, or yeah, I mean I think my all-time favourite is um bathens. Oh yeah, in a sort of just because they control like them they do, I think they do three beers, but one of them might be a seasonal, then the other two aren't yeah, um, the bitter and the pale. Right. Um, I think a bitter and a pale. And but see we can only get them in their own pubs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You might, but there might there are a couple that also do, but they have they chimper cellar and all this kind of thing. Yeah, and their pubs are incredible, and so yeah, therefore, the experience means that you just love the beer, and the beer is like you know, second there.
SPEAKER_01It's more sort of special, so it's quite localized, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Only in the sort of West Midlands Black Country area.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right.
SPEAKER_02So you yeah, so I highly recommend and you go to and they so I think it's the Vine. I have to check this, sorry. If this is from the Vine, it's where they brew brew the beers, yeah, is a really fantastic pub and probably okay, and it's like yeah. I went there on like a like a sort of glum Tuesday afternoon, and it was just round full of people having like these beers with cops, and it was just like wow, this is really special. Yeah, I mean, and and it it's they made open fermentation, so it's like really traditional bitters and really really good. Yeah, uh, and then and sort of like so they're you know, they're like a family brewer. Yeah, and then I guess like the question is like the newer brewers, yeah, which are those kind of ones that you which are you know which are which breweries like that, you know. If I you know a bar with craft beer, which is the one that the banker, the one that I and I you know, I would say um Hansback and Hobday London Black. Which is incredible how yeah how wide far and wide that beer has gone because I remember I went to Leven, which is in Belgium in Stella's made there, yeah, like uh big Simpsons factory, yeah. And it's um there's this craft bar. I went there and uh he was like, Oh, you're from England, oh you must you must fancy a London black, and it somehow got hold of a keg and they were and I was just like but what I like about it is that it look I think why Guinness is so successful is because of the way it looks in a glass. I think that goes a long way. Also, people's like mouthfeel of it, how it feels the same whenever they've had it before, so it's connect to good memories, yeah. But I think London Black offers all that, but also has more in it to the wheelhouse, more sort of oaky, yeah, it's more of that secondary flavour, which I feel dies with Guinness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a bit it's a little bit one-dimensional in that way, I think. Yeah, whereas you like you say if it's got an oaky finish, then that's got an extra kind of level to it, I think. I think so.
SPEAKER_02I'm just gonna take a photo of my empty pipe, which is what I do for Instagram. Do that if there's good lacing, wouldn't it? Absolutely. I mean that that's that's quite good lacing.
SPEAKER_01Let's see how have you got a favourite you could either have a favourite bar snack or a pub meal, or both, yeah, or both, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I think the bar snack would be like the garlic mogo about the regency. So mogo is um cassava, right? Um, which is a kind of like almost what is it, like sweet potato style thing, yeah. Like because you know, cassava is cassava, yeah, but it's that white thing that you it's it's a carb. Right, I guess that's okay. And um and in hammer beer, and so it is um, I think it's something like triple cooked, like it's boiled, um wok fried, deep fried. Oh yeah, um, and then they go through huge amounts of this um garlic and chili, um it is absolutely phenomenal, and it's a classic grazing, yeah. So it's um African Gujarati, so it's like an Indian slash hyphenated African thing, and it's yeah, really good with beer.
SPEAKER_01Sounds really good. Um, so where's is that from somewhere in particular?
SPEAKER_02So the Regency, which is in Queensbury. Yeah, you've got to go, it's so good, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, have you got a favourite um bar or pub you've been to on holiday, you know, be it England or in internationally?
SPEAKER_02So when it when it comes to um proper holidays, as in with my family, yeah, it's like because I've got quite a young family. Yeah, we um they like the recent ones have been like the the bar at Eurocamp, which will be like uh we went to ones in France and it had it it basically was just like one keg and then one one boy, really. He he looked like he was 16, dispensing about a hundred beers of Stella. But I just recently back from Sardinia, and we had a more we forced the kids to have a more grown-up holiday, nice, um, which was fine because it was a beach and it was warm and it actually was pretty good. And Sardinia was really interesting because they have lots of German tourists, so there was a bar that had um some incredible German import beers, yeah, and so we would just drink it out, and it's one of those things where I do like a rock pub, and I especially like it abroad because they kind of have base it on loads of they use the anglophiles, the people who run this, yeah, or because they the music that is going to be in English, so they speak with English, and they're also interested in English culture. If you say you're from London, they like name a few bands, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, they yeah, I was gonna say, even if you're in Newcastle, they think you're from London. I think that's in London that night, so yeah.
SPEAKER_02Is that near London? Yeah, yeah. So I kind of got into like um this idea. So we went to this place called Al Giro, which um I thought was a proper town, but only really opens for tourists.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And the guy the guy I noticed that one of the guys who was the service, because there's no bar, you have to go and sit down and they yeah, you wait for the weight to come over, it's tiresome. You want to just go and get you can see the beer, he's just gonna sit down and wait, yeah, you know. But anyway, I got chatting with him over over like went most days for two weeks, and I was like, Why is it that you speak in English to Italian people? And he's like, I refuse to speak Italian because I'm Sardinian, and so he would speak, you know, he had and I was like, Okay, right, which is sound right, yeah, and I think that's kind of like I think also it's really good to go to a pub when you're abroad because you don't know often you don't know what what people are saying, no, so it's so really important or you're not listening to other people's conversations or get annoyed by them, um but also like here's the thing I think beers of all can be a lot uh better because they have better gas dispense. Yeah, so we have very flat points here, yeah. That's why I like cars because yeah, they're carbonated lightly, but when you go to Keg here, it unless you go to a few specialist places, they don't carbonate the head and they're so you you get like on the continent, you'll have the froth palette and things like that, which you just don't get. The best point I had, so we were having very good like import urging appeals, um trying to think of other ones like fru pills and all this kind of and the fru cauche. And um but we went to a um uh went to an Italian restaurant, of course it's in Italy, went to a Pete Pity area, pizza restaurant, and had a Culzberg, right? But not your 3.6, it was the how I remember it to be, and it had a lovely head and it had a lot lots of fizz, and I was just like, that was really good. But then after two weeks of that, I was missing casks, my cast pale out, yeah. This is the perhaps what shackled me most in this country is the beer. I mean, if you look at it in like Europe, um it's like we're one of the strong beer nations, aren't we? Yeah, you've got us, Belgium, Czech Republic, and and Germany. And what all of those cultures have done is to properly ring fence their beer, and we haven't done that in a way that we should have done with karsk. We shouldn't, it should be used go. If Belgium was used go world two, so I'll pass away, and so and to miss it when you go abroad shows how how how enduring and different and how how nice it is to just sit down and have a few pints and hopefully not have a hangover the next morning. Yeah, whereas with those, you know, like I'm saying, with those that that Carlsburg being a five percent good beer, but also but not sessionable as we would see it as Brits. No, no. I've once spoke to a Belgian brewer who was contract brewing um British beers. In fact, he was brewing King Cobra, which you know, Cobra beer, they have like King Cobra was like a Belgian beer, okay. And he he was saying it wasn't hugely successful because British people like to drink beer and not have soft drinks in between. Yeah, you know, it's this idea that we we'll just see everything as sessionable, yeah. Um, which is quite interesting because we're perhaps that's not such a great idea, and it is good to moderate because even if you were to have 10 table beers, no maybe not table table beers, but you know, yeah. I mean I've tried it. How many kernel table bears? Yeah I've I've had quite a lot. I mean, yeah, but the point is we we attack things in terms of volume, don't we? Yeah, which might not necessarily be such a great idea.
SPEAKER_01No, no. So you were quite enamoured with the sardinium pub. Was it puby in style or was it more of a bar, or was it doing the old pen pub thing?
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, I think that's why I liked it. I have I don't I don't think I've uh I've ever been to a a a British pub transplanted abroad that I like. Um I think they would have benefited from a proper bar service.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like because the like there's lots of times when you're waiting for people like come on, the first two are gonna be quicker.
SPEAKER_01We're not used to this sitting there made and wrapping your fingers, yeah. And so I suppose it's just different culture, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they have that thing of uh and sometimes it can be a bit judgy when you're like uh and they're like another straight away, and you're like, and sometimes I think they're like, do they want you to have the big one? They're like uh big, big, you want the big new. Well, you're advertising it as well. Yeah, and your carbonation is so good by the time I have get to the end of it, it won't be flat.
SPEAKER_01Heard about some uh pubs in Japan who are they're quite new, like Serpent 2000, but they're made out like with beams, like old pubs, and they're really popular, apparently. I was completely unaware, not been there, but yeah, well, no, not simulated pubs.
SPEAKER_02I wrote I wrote about um Hob Goblin um Witchwood Brewery, and they had these pubs, they licensed it and they had these pubs in Japan, and they still the one in Rapongi, which my friends oddly, when I was telling them about the story, hadn't been published yet. We're at the editing stage, and I told them about the story, and they were like, Oh, yeah, we went to the one in Rapongi. And I was like, Oh my god, well, I've been looking for so I interviewed them about it, yeah, and they said it's just really weird. Like they landed, they long flight with changes, landed in Japan and then went to like this English style pub, and the because the people they were with were like really so proud that it existed, they wanted to force them to have fish and chips, right? And they were kind of like, I really, really wanted to have sushi or whatever, yeah. And that's the thing that's a bit strange. I mean, is that it's it's great if you're an expat, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Oh, if you want to watch sport, it's quite good, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I suppose if you're like if you support a British team or whatever and you wanted to see it in a thing, I get it, and like but I do think it is a bit weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't know, but I I suspect that um the fish and chips might be um quite unfish and chip like they might be like sort of squiding. I think they said it said it was rubbish.
SPEAKER_02The fish and chips were sort of no, I think it was more like it was so the guy who ran them has has he's one of those people who has uh one of these businessmen who have the those like British shops there selling British stuff to expats, and they were this is just frozen fish and chips exported from some western country in some Japan. So it was not tribute to yeah, yeah. It's not like um it's like having a weather spoons dinner, isn't it? Yeah, that's what I was kind of thinking, yeah. Yeah, although I do rate Weberspoons chips. Yeah, I think they're excellent. That's fair enough, yeah. I gave them to my son and he was like, these are the best chips ever, and they're like, even better than mine.
SPEAKER_01Have you either ever seen a ghost in a pub or have you got any stories about ghosts in a pub?
SPEAKER_02Well I've never seen a ghost because I think crucially, spoiler alert, they don't exist. But when I worked for um my first job in in uh in the Seven Oaks Chronicle, it was a staple that every Halloween we had to report on ghosts. And I think there was one front page story about a tree that had been blown into the shape of a witch's face.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant.
SPEAKER_02And and then there was one where I I had to stay over one night at a pub haunting, which is basically entertainment in that nothing happens, and then like people downstairs are like throwing shoes up against the wall, and and then there's some some tiresome woman going, ooh, can we hear that? Oh no, yeah. Was that an all-nighter or not quite? In the sense I was drinking all night, yes, it was. Yeah, but that helps. Yeah, yeah. It was a lock-in time. Thinking about it, I mean you've got to look at Positives at all, it was a lock-in with a bunch of strange people. But that essentially is working on local news if you throw yourself into it. Wow, which I mean, I'm I'm not making fun of it. In fact, I I loved it because it in fact taught the trade in the sense that the big the best sources were the landlords. Yeah, and so if you've ever been Seven Oaks, the the pub to go to is the anchor, and it's run by Barry, and who is he claims to be the oldest licensee who still works full-time. And he's had that pub for ages, yeah. And he is he sees it as entertainment, like you you are coming into his lounge and he will entertain you.
SPEAKER_01He's a proper host, yeah. Barry property.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but and and I think but it's it's still community, it's still community, and the best community thing that he does is that every um Christmas day he opens in the morning uh just for his locals, and then he drives them home himself in his car. It's great.
SPEAKER_01I've heard about things like that, and that that is service, isn't it? That is um reliable.
SPEAKER_02There used to be this um that in fact, yeah. But I sort of like you know, get embruled in all the localness of it all, which I love. You know, I've always wanted to be a local in a pub, and I felt like I was a local there. And one there was this guy called, and he everyone was known by Hurricane by nicknames. This guy was called Hurricane, and um he I I don't know how to uh to to describe him without being without defaming him, but he kind of wasn't the most intelligent of of people, but he was kind and soft and everything. And it was during the time of I mean, we're talking 20 odd years ago, so there wasn't like uh dating apps or anything like that. And so he got into chatting to women on cable TV. Can you imagine that's the thing that you can type in these messages? Excellent. But it was some sort of like scam, and he was gonna marry this, and so apparently they were like, they were like to me, like, can you do a documentary about it so you go over with him to Africa? Come on, go to Africa with some random inner. I don't mind helping you out every now and then again. But so I you know, we we tried to pitch it as a documentary to like um, but it was just so we there's a somewhere there's a a pilot episode of this documentary of this guy Hurricane, but apparently I and so I hadn't so I left and went back like quite a long quite I left quite a gap, like you know, 15 years or so. I went back quite recently, and I think it's I saw a press release where Barry was saying that he's now never gonna retire or something like that. So I thought I'll interview you. So I interviewed him, and he's like, Oh yeah, you know, Hurricane went over and he's got like two wives. He's got the update.
SPEAKER_01Oh right. So he did alright, and he found love in the end, or no.
SPEAKER_02I think his wife found money in the end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's probably uh more accurate, yeah. Have you got a favourite live pub?
SPEAKER_02Or I mean that's really difficult. That's possibly the most difficult of them all because um you can have more than one or what yeah. I think I'm gonna have one in each category. So I think part of the difficulty so favourite I'm now gonna deconstruct the question. So favourite. Would suggest one that I returned to repeatedly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Something you look fondly back on. So it might have been a historic favourite or from your youth, or it might be your current favourite that you always go back to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I guess the it's really difficult. I feel like I feel like um I went to this one recently um called The Golden Smog, and it's in Stockton on Tees. And it's um a micropub in the sense that it took over a place that made headstones and set sold sold sold. Um but it doesn't feel like a micropub in that is done out like this in sort of traditional style. But within this is this is the key to I think this is the essence of what I like about these kind of pubs. Yeah, is if you scratch underneath the surface, you see all the bits that are really modern, like the beer selection, but also like the anti-fascist signs, football stickers, that kind of thing. The guy who runs it is a socialist, and then and his whole things about so Stockton overwhelmingly voted for Brexit, but it is a Labour era. Okay, and so his thing is about taking on the lies and the false news. So people someone might come in and say something about immigration, which is totally wrong. And so he was even fact-checking during up to the Brexit vote, and and he was when it came to the EU referendum, he had a all these customers have a tab, and he had a tab on who was voting remain, who was voting leave. Apparently it was 70% remain, so this is like a sort of like an enclave within it. And he was saying that that the 30% even included like lifelong anarchists who were just voting against globalization and all this kind of stuff, right? And and it has this so when you go in, he is because of that, yeah, it's really warming and welcoming to outsiders, yeah, to people. And so I when I went there, I was just like, wow, okay, this is a real good template of how it how it works in these kind of places where which are a bit different to what you get in like the southeast of England. I'm sure, yeah. And so, yeah, I think and and the beer section was was second to none. I think like what was really interesting is that every all the obviously the cask was like very local, yeah, but the the the keg was like uh they had this one called Mittel, I think, and it I was like, I had it, and I was like, oh, this must be uh Belgian or German Pilsner. Oh no, it's brewed in York. I was like, wow, okay, that's really exceptional, you know. Like this is you know, and he had the carbonation done right, but then he's been to Ger he's a big beer fan, he's gone to all these places. So he knows and so what he's done is uh he's kept certain bits of the Stockton tradition, which is heavily cast beer with those banked bitters. You ever have one of those? That's the bankers are these big cloudy heads that like so he doesn't do those cloudy heads, but they do them elsewhere. It's a bit of a gimmick, he reckons, but it is just really um good localism. You know, that's the thing about you know it's very hard to say what's your best pub, what's your best library? Yeah, all that what I like is places of a free house where your money is going to a guy who lives locally, yeah, not a corporation. Yeah, and I think the problem would be is that it's hard for people to navigate. Yeah, you will get a pub with a nice landlord who's a really good guy, um, but it's a star pub, you know, a Heineken or whatever, and it's like but hang on a minute, this is a corporation. But then you think to yourself, actually, when you look at the options, yeah, if the guy's really nice, uh he's fostering good social cohesion, you've got to go for it. Six boxes, yeah. But ultimately, in an ideal world, you want that in a freehouse setting because then you can then choose local local breweries, local beers and it's all on their terms in a good way, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um because some of the little independent breweries are great, and uh luckily my local does endorse those. So sometimes they're further afield, and certain breweries do swaps and things, don't they?
SPEAKER_02I don't think it matters where you as long as it's a small brewery. I think as long as it's a a small independent brewery, I think because it's a zero taxation as well, like the bigger beer they they don't pay as much. They don't you know often they have shareholders, it goes it's it's like everything. A lot of people now want to shop locally, and locally means that that money stays in the uh in that area, yeah. And I think that they don't want shareholders, they don't want foreign ownership.
SPEAKER_01I thought they're not slightly different, but I think Totmas had their own Totmas pound or something, didn't they? Yes, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah. These transition towns had it at it one stage in the list as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, have you got a a favorite uh a dead pub or a pub that's gone that you miss, you know, whether it's local to you or beyond?
SPEAKER_02Uh I know there's a lot of gone, but I think it's really sad this because you get so many like that have um disappeared. I guess I guess I found this when we walked into this pub actually, because this is a pub that's got barbillions. Yes. There's one um near where I live called the Ravensborn Arms. Right. And it was um I think that where it was placed was really was a really important place for a pub in that it was by a uh hospital. And so it's a really I think some you know when you go visit someone, you sometimes do need to have a beer.
SPEAKER_01Quite an emotional place or place for emotion, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean there is a smaller pub there now, but that pub had barbecue and it's multi-purpose. It just I think the tragedy, I think why I'm regretted, why I hate the fact that it's it's shut the most is that it's just empty. Yeah, it's just nothing now. It's not even flat, it's just it's like yeah, why this could be open, so like and in fact, there's it's the same with uh weather spoons uh near me in Forest Hill that shut down, and that's nothing as well. And it's like that shut down, one in Catford shut down, yeah, and it's like weather spoons are like much relying, but they were when they're open, can be like a warm space for people. Some people don't use that thing where you get unlimited tea and they just sit there. Yeah, in many ways, they replace a lot of things, like you say they replaced the curry ass with the curries, the chip eat with a fish and chip, but they have also replaced community centres and places that people can just congregate them being me lamenting like a palm guy, like it's nothing compared to like someone not being able to have that weather spoken experience when they're elderly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I agree. And like you say about the the one by the hospital, it's like it's almost not service, but somewhere for someone to deal with whatever they've whoever they visited or process things, and and there used to be one in by the Bedford um hospital, there but there were two, and they're both shut. And a lot of the doctors and nurses used to go in there and hit it hard, and then in the olden days, yeah, which is a thing for them, you know.
SPEAKER_02They'd often be the most diverse um diverse pubs you could go to, the ones by hospitals, NHS with their diverse start, you know, the snowy used called snowy peaks are where management are wipe, and then on underneath that people who might go for a drink are gonna be but I mean those kind of places, the other other kind of thing, the hospital pubs are the ones that I've the other ones are railway station pubs. Like we're we're quite near to a railway station.
SPEAKER_01It could be quite transient, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think people's change because people work from home more, those have changed. Yeah, but when when I worked in this local um uh paper, we campaigned for this um pub called the Farmers, which was uh Seven Oaks Station pub. If you know Seven Oaks at all, Seven Oaks Station is quite very far from the high street, okay. It's it's a long walk. I think at least 20 minutes up a hill to get to the high street. Yeah, and so the the pub there um was owned by a charity called the Bishopsgate Institute, and they just wanted to turn it into flats, and we were like, but if you're a charity, you should see that this is performing a social function. It was that kind of that pub. Yeah, and it just didn't work. Whatever we did, we even like enlisted the cheeky girls to join the cat. So any whenever you had like these, like anyone visiting and they wanted some coverage, you'd be like, Oh, come and meet me at the farmers.
SPEAKER_01What's one of the cheeky girls connected to a politician or something?
SPEAKER_02Uh Lembek OPEC, yeah, yeah. They lived there. It's often like you know, the transition where where you're going from one place to another, and you go into a hospital like say it's like where you can gather your thoughts, but also the staff have a great place to unwind. Um and I think there a lot of the Desi pubs that I uh sort of covered, yeah, they um were they were for workers and so they soaked up in things. So, like if you go to Scotswanian South, or one of the big as well as like the Asian customers big group of firemen like going in.
SPEAKER_01So like a post-work pub kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02Postwork, yeah, yeah. I think that post-work thing is it's really important because it's it's people's like transition, isn't it? Yeah, from their work to their to their leisure to their home life, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It's nice to see the ebb and flow of the um the people like the builders coming at full with their the gear on and then you get the um people coming a bit later on with their suits and whatever. And it's not it's interesting to see that and the people with their going out shirts on after that.
SPEAKER_02So you see this different patterns of this is a this it really is a Bedfordshire thing, the going out shirts.
SPEAKER_01Going out shirts, you know, something jazzy.
SPEAKER_02Well we haven't even mentioned it, but I you know I'm a Bedfordshire lad, and um so I I grew up in a in a place that not only has loads of dead pubs but also dead high street in in Dunstable. Dunstable, right. And so like there was this um did you ever cover it in your thing, the Ritzy nightclub?
SPEAKER_01No, but I've heard it. In the quadrant classic name, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It was it was seen as like the most, in my eyes, the most illicit thing going on because it was like the nightclub. What could it be like? And then when you get older, you go to it and you go, pretty shit. But did you ever go to or ever know about the one in the Milton Keynes in the point? Yes, I used to go there. You say that. But it was called what was it called again? It was called the Club.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_02Was it Club Europa or something like that?
SPEAKER_01It was called like they used to do a rock night on a Thursday, right? And that was interesting.
SPEAKER_02In my head, that was very sort of like Carisian. Okay. I remember I was a child for all this. Like the Louvre. The Louvre. But also, when you think about it, logistically, it's crazy because a lot of it was glass, yeah. So you'd be just looking out onto the that kind of American style. Blade Runner. Milton Keynes was crazy because he had like a decaying, like decayed market town, and then you had this futuristic, modernist, brutalist thing built, which was sucking my life out of where I grew up because that's why everyone's like. But um when you went apart from that, and maybe the concrete cows, and they had a cathedral with mention, the rest was just crap shops, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just chain shops. So was there a good boozer that you remember in Downstable?
SPEAKER_02Or well, a lot of them were very sort of you know problematic places to go. You'll have a bit of racism, you'll just end up meeting the same boring people. Okay, but there was this one called there were two that were the bird in hands, uh remember that was uh like a uh I guess the best way of playing it is a motorcycle pub and it had a disco it's a disco, you'd say it but yeah, it had a disco on Friday nights. The DJ guy. The DJ guy played like you know, like uh offspring, you know, like that kind of stuff, which was great, and yeah, and when when I was around uh you know 16 to 18, this was like amazing. Something different, yeah. There was also another uh rock venue in um the middle part of like it was one of and it also had it also had strippers, so like, but it had like this thing where that was the back of the pub and we would play pool and we didn't get involved in that. No, um but the but I remember coming out of that one night and I had a dinosaur junior t-shirt, and this girl was like, Dinosaur Junior are shit. This is kind of like I think she was quite drunk, but I'm not sure she knew who dinosaur junior were. Because otherwise she wouldn't be saying that, would she?
SPEAKER_01Of course not.
SPEAKER_02And time has proved her wrong.
SPEAKER_01No, no, absolutely not, no. I think my um I gave my dinosaur junior t-shirt away, gave it to my dad, and he used it for decorating with hindsight, no. With hindsight, it might be worse as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's yeah, I don't know what happened to that dinosaur junior t-shirt, but um it's probably you say it's worth a lot, but that would be worth a lot if I hadn't ever worn it. Yeah, and then no one's gonna ever do no one buys a t-shirt and then uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well they tend to have funny the armpits going and stuck in your loft and it might go a bit ranky and shrink, and yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I mean I think what was interesting is that I see like when my dad used to go go out in Dunstable, it was a different kettle of fish because there was the Queensway Hall which had the wrestling that had this incredible futuristic I'll have to send you a photo of this part. Look, it it was just this it was out towards the Dunstable Downs, and it was just this it's like something from a Pixar cartoon. The Windsor. That's it, the Windsock, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Mad architecture. Yeah, so is it like a Bernie Inn or something?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I don't know anyway, something like that. Okay. He would drive in his Capri Laser. Yeah, have some drinks, drive drive back drunk because he used to do that all the time. Well, yeah, it's not a smoking in the car with children.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, so he did all that. Sorry, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, he did. Sorry. It's absolutely fucking terrifying. But um, yeah, he I think really when you came when when you look back on what we've what we're losing, yeah, is that there was a golden age there of cheap pints. I remember pints being so cheap when I first started drinking. I mean, I started drinking when I was like 14, and I remember like the pints and packets of 20 Marlborough lights that don't even exist anymore. You could just get a pretty crap job and be able to that's all you needed. But there was another um dead pub I saw you cover in uh Luton that I went to. So I had this so I had this this weird period that's kind of not not not explained in my career. Obviously, I went to university, but when I was 16, yeah, actually, when I was 15, I left school. I was I was suspended a few times, I just didn't get on with school. It's a common thing with people who've colour, and I just got a job and it was selling carpet cleaning door to door. So you'd go and say, do the spiel, and then and and the people I did that with because you go in a car with a bunch of people and you do it, and they were all just signing on as well as doing this job, and they would smoke joints and stuff like that. And so, like I had never smoked smoked a joint before, and I remember once passing out in Barclays Bank or had a whitey in like 11 o'clock on a Thursday. But we went to this pub, and that's that pub that you featured, and we would just smoke joints and play Paulia all the time. I'd love to go flatbirth.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned what people call a flat birth pub. Ah, the yeoman, the better yeoman. How could I forget?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeoman, yeah. And also a few of those pubs around Marsh Farmer went to. Some of those some pubs I went to were which had raves in as well. Like you mentioned this when I saw your book, I was like, okay, I I've been to that pub, I remember that pub. And there was one that was like towards the M1, I think, or towards one of the motorways. I remember going to a rave there. Right. And I remember there was one, it was I can't remember it was a wee sheaf or something. There was one in Dunstable I went to where it was a where we'd go and then we'll go to a rave in Marsh Farm and things like that. But the I was far too young for to be. I didn't I was luckily it was sensible, didn't we take drugs? No, but I think there were friends of mine who did take drugs, and there were people who looked after them, which became so my issue is with the super pubs that I started to go to there was no one that cared, they wanted you to take them everything where there was more of a communal socialist element of the race. Yeah, so a bit more responsible in a way and and I think really we when I say like these pubs were called mash it, races and stuff. Yeah, they did have that, but there was a sense that you were part of this thing, they seemed to tolerate crustiness, you know, which we were really that could go either way, yeah. They might not tolerate crustiness. They didn't like travellers, but they they saw I definitely was more eppy, yeah, crusty rain than alternative. That was like oh he's even though he's AC is you roll him into that thing and then you can like crusty light, yes. I guess I'm gonna be awesome. Yes, whereas really didn't start dreading I still you know like I gave up going to Glaston very long time ago. I can't do all the squalor. No, like now I'm like you know it's too much, too much. Yeah, but there was a lot of squalor in those days, but I saw it as like really cool, yeah. But then when you get to yeah, but when you have it for enough time, you know. I remember being in a raves and warehouse, and like I opened the door, and a a woman was in the toilet, and uh and it was just like oh this is bleak, yeah. There's no glamour in it. And so what the super clubs did is they took all that out.
SPEAKER_01Did the early days of fabric? Do you remember that room? I remember there being a bed by the bar and that confused me. And I was quite intrigued, and then I got given some lollipops, and I thought that's nice.
SPEAKER_02So back trying to get it for trying to get it, get my sort of James Lavelle sort of that sort of DJ. So it's fat fabric was Farrandom, wasn't it? Yeah, so fabric was the big one I went to. And so towards the end of when I was going, they did have uh the chill-out rooms with parabedics and things like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I remember a place in we've been for a just a night out with beers, and we ended up in wandering around Holberg, and we went down this basement, it was a party, but there was just a table with lots of bottles of water on it, and we were confused. We just wanted beer. We knew then we realised what it why, and there was like some good music on, yeah, but no booze, and I was like, uh that's why. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, it that's why it's perhaps good that we have sessionable beers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. True, yeah. We just wanted more beer.
SPEAKER_02You know, I've always been that. I never different. We always have the can of can of whatever fosters or whatever it was, rather than having a bottle of water.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so is there a band scene in a pub that you remember? So we we were trying to look on Google for this pub in Leeds.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and so I went to uh Gig, and my mate was like, You go see this guy, he's a bit crazy. He's called John Otway. Oh so in the 90s we we went there, and it was it was really good, it's very funny. Um it's actually what I kind of like it when musicians don't take themselves too seriously. But obviously, if they're super talented, then very unlikely they're gonna come out and self-deprecate. But um, what was really funny was we were having this conversation about beetles or stones. Um kinks. And he was over here, he owed we were going for a piss in the Urinals, and then he poked his head out and then gave us his opinion of the all the you know the the the arguments keep continuing, don't they? And then I think he even drove away his Sinclair C5 to make like it a perfect evening.
SPEAKER_01What? I think he's still going. Yeah, he is.
SPEAKER_02I saw I saw I went over it a few years back now, it's about 10 years, and I he I saw him driving around Sinclair C5. And I did that thing of like waving and like he's not gonna know who I am. He's like, right, sitting in the darkened toilet, like 20 years, 20, 30, 30 years, 30 years ago. He's not gonna know who I am. But I still thought I'll give it a go. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So was that the the Duchess of York or possibly? I think so. Yeah, I think it was, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean Lee's there was some like great, great stuff we saw in in the mid-90s then. Like I remember we saw Chumblewumber a few times. Okay, whereas at the town of Country Club had some like brilliant stuff. There was a I'm big into my Jazz, and so was this like Jazz Club that was next to that, maybe the underground, it was called the underground, and then the phono was really good, which was like this golf club, which was really naff because it was next to the Morrisons. But I had my 18th birthday there. I remember my my uh for my 18th birthday, my flatmate bought me uh the first sleeper album in between uh, no, or they bought me the second one, the Icco. I can't remember which one, but it is just to me, it's all to me, Lee's is about the 90s. I have been back since. Um but I get these like real for me, it's all connected to that part of West Yorkshire.
SPEAKER_01It's a nice place. So we we went back a few years ago. Well, no, a couple of years ago, I think it was it. The dry dock pub's still there.
SPEAKER_02That used to have giant connect forward, yes, and the Otley Brum would end there. There's all end there, but no one would ever make it that far. But there would be apocryphal stories of people making it. But a connect giant connect forward used to cause this huge commotion when everyone emptied anyone emptied the big classic to be connected. Yeah, well, I think my nephew did the um the I really want to you're making me really want to go to the droid. So just to for no one, yeah, for anyone who's never been, it's basically a boat that's moored in this in a city centre, isn't it? The university part of the city centre. Um probably has a great history to it all but um yeah it's just and the oddly run is just it's kind of bitter sweet because it's ruined headingly which is like beautiful yeah but like but uh apparently every like Saturday and like holiday weekend it's just full of stack and cricket ground up that way. Yeah so where cricket ground is on the so I lived in Headingley on Cardigan Road and Escore. Oh that rings a bell yeah Cardigan Road is the one that runs from uh I've got to go to try Burling Kirkstool near towards far headly far heavenly to me is like like absolute yeah absolutely yeah tough to live there and Harton was the other place that I thought was very good. What's really good about um Lee T is that they've got strong beer culture but the pubs are excellent and even the Queen King pubs are excellent. Go and watch the racing of the day to break it just I think it's been regenerated and holding onto some heritage pubs you've got the white box yeah um you've got tech brewery now and then that one you then say the guys brewery who who might save technically save the number in the sense I say Victorian but everything Victorian probably zipped a wall later but in a beautiful stained glass windows round table very nice long bar pubs it's and it makes so much um white box you can get points full bridge full bridge part in uh bankers have so good as well you know these are affordable points so playable if only you could turn left out of the train station always be under construction at the first time I've been nickel's air I mean it's all recorded there are like kind of new reach elements to it fundamentally for me some work in like on a on a revisit I I really liked it there was the the corn exchange yeah corn exchange bar at the bottom anyway yeah and it was all nice independent units like expensive denim and then it was a nice little fanzine shop and stuff yeah I think I think that it was if Canada Market wasn't owned by a twat that's what can the market would be like anecdotes yeah so I have this weird obsession with a pub which is sadly now dead actually and it died uh a few weeks ago and it's in the Harley pool train station and it's run by this guy called Pete Morgan and Pete Morgan was one of these like tell it how it is Pete a land to like and what's so special about that is that that normally happens in a a neighborhood pub doesn't it like in a puppet train station so this guy only served uh cast on gravity so three barrels um and he only and then the other beers were bottled and the big signs saying no fosters or this and so people walking because it's a train station park quite a big talent you know and it and they'll walk in and they'll say um what logers have you got and he'll just knock to eye contact look at the crowd and go whatever spoons all right and he just was so um what it was he his history was that he he um really liked um his first microphone opened camera and he went to that camera conference right discovered about it yeah and then dis and then decided to take that to Harley pool and it was like a lost property office in Harley space yeah he took it over and then did it exactly how he wanted to do it with his rules in that space that he is in Harley is a massive brewery called Cameron you wouldn't have heard of them but they're f but they're not they're they're massive but the contract brew at one time they were brewing Fosters out there and he's so anti-La that Lancer Brewing came in with foster shirts and he bought that and so he has these guys that say no fosters which was like a bit which they have no big culture of fosters in Hollywood which is a bit strange and it's always like look at it's like I guess the anecdote is that I interviewed him for um which is the camera magazine and lovely great and I really wanted to know about him I also interviewed Martin Hideo who's the guy who did the the talk that inspired him to do it was this idea of sadly he's going to close yeah and so I went up sort of um about a couple of months ago and I thought I'd be afforded a hero's welcome I thought I'd be like you know like oh thanks very much for that you know thank you so much people have come that's what I normally get he just uh he just went yep yep thought the article yep um and that's sadly it was really good because what he did was he had everything on gravity but I'd previously not like on gravity I found it but I like the more the body you get for a beer engine but it's always so well conditioned I had a thumb which joy per that I was like this is better here than anywhere else I've ever had and that's quite incredible because he's just literally got a tap display that's that's much yeah because that unique point yeah and he had all of every single yeah I mean we're here and they have the batches on but he had every single one that he's ever done which he proved brew dog and it's all gone.
SPEAKER_01It's all gone.
SPEAKER_02I wonder what it is now yeah what I'll be interested yeah I'll find I'm actually talking to it tomorrow morning actually I think so hopefully someone has taken it over. I think they're probably dispensing fosters as we speak.
SPEAKER_01They might well be yeah some call it cooking lag you don't want to cook with it