How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [62]
However, as I’m well aware that everyone else enjoys pubs a lot, I feel duty-bound to address what might be done to stop the anvil of death coming down with increasing velocity on what people in The Archers like to call the beating heart of the village.
Obviously, the drinks industry is quick to blame the economy for the problems but, plainly, this is nonsense. I have absolutely no idea what beer costs, but I bet you can buy two pints and a packet of pork itchings for less than the price of a parking ticket.
Plainly, then, it’s not money that’s keeping people away, which leads us directly to the fact that the one thing you cannot do in a smoking room is smoke. There’s no doubt that this has had a profound effect on the licensing trade, and David Cameron must make it a top priority to overturn the ban the moment he takes office. In the meantime, however, publicans must stop whining and carefully study the anti-smoking rulebook to find a loophole. There will be one. I guarantee it. This is a government document, remember, so it’s bound to be festooned with mistakes big enough to drive through in a pantechnicon.
I’ve given the matter only a moment’s thought and already I’ve come up with some proposals. You could claim your ‘lounge’ is a theatre and that all the customers are actors. Then they can light up. Or you could make your pub an embassy. Or, best of all, sell fine cigars, which makes you a tobacco specialist. And then the ban doesn’t apply.
Next, we must address the problem of food. I appreciate of course that there is extra cash to be earned from serving meals, but unless you know what you’re doing, and, let’s be honest, if your chef is a school-leaver from Darlington, he does not, I wouldn’t bother. He’ll only end up making a shepherd’s pie from actual shepherds.
Once you have ditched the menu, fired the gormless oaf you employed to murder the chips, done away with the fancy napkins and edged craftily through the smoking ban, you must then turn your attention to the most important point of all, the main reason pubs are shutting down so fast: the idiotic notion that you should be encouraging your customers to drink ‘responsibly’. So, instead of displaying a sign that says you will not serve anyone who appears to be intoxicated, accept the age-old business practice that you will serve absolutely anyone, even if they’ve crawled to the bar on their hands and knees, leaving a trail of sick in their wake. You are in business to make money; not to send your customers home with the liver of a foetus.
The government says the average adult male should not drink more than three to four units of alcohol a day. And to judge by the ‘drink responsibly’ slogans that now appear as part of a gentlemen’s agreement on all alcohol products and advertisements, the booze industry agrees. Small wonder they’re in a mess and all the pubs are closing down. How can you possibly expect to make a profit if you are displaying a sign asking customers to buy less? It’s madness. Think about it. Three units is one large glass of wine, and for all the effect this has on a 16-stone man like me, I may as well suck the moisture from a clump of moss. I drink at least a bottle of wine a night. And before going to bed I have a small tumbler of vodka enlivened by the addition of some sloes I found last year growing by a railway line.
This is my business, and the drinks industry, if it had half a brain, would be encouraging me to keep it up. The government, meanwhile, should ask what on earth it’s doing telling the people it claims to represent how much of what they should put in their mouths. Genuinely, it staggers me that with all the problems facing the nation right now, some of my tax money is being used to work out how much wine I should drink before supper. What next? An enormous Prora-style holiday camp on the east coast where smiling families in lederhosen will be ordered to do star jumps from dawn till dusk? Drinking to excess is what separates