I live in a village that has no pub.
It wasn’t always this way; the first bitter shandy I tasted as a lad of 16 was discreetly served by the landlord of the Blue Bell at Crookham in Northumberland. I honed my domino skills alongside my father, grandfather and uncle at the big circular sycamore table made perfect for a shuffle by the cartwheel iron band riveted around its circumference.
For a century and more the pub served as the village’s focal point. More than a mere refreshment station where friends and neighbours relaxed, the Bell was also the village meeting place, a citizen’s advice bureau that played host to gatherings necessitated by births, marriages and deaths. Over the years a succession of well-liked landlords were counsellor, bon vivant, pools coupon distributor and, occasionally, banker to their loyal customers.
When my granddad was killed by a car as he walked the road to his beloved local, the landlord, Cedric, closed the place for the evening out of respect and helped make the arrangements for the old widower’s funeral.
Food, honest-to-goodness no-frills platefuls, arrived under Joe Smailes’ tenure and the Bell began to lose its mainly masculine tone. Times continued to change; cigarette sales ended and the food was gentrified thanks to Jan and David Thompson.
The transformation from rural drinking den to roadside licensed restaurant – local bar and domino tradition thankfully retained – was complete. And then … disaster.
The Thompsons retired. The pub was sold. Prices rose, meals diminished, locals felt rejected. As a result, trade plummeted and the place went bust.
That was almost two years ago. Since then, the Bell has stood empty and forlorn, gilded letters missing from its nameplate, its forecourt rank with weeds. And the community has suffered.
Of course, we have a pair of great pubs in neighbouring villages; the Black Bull at Etal has been a local for as long as the Bell and the wonderful Red Lion at Milfield, which boasts the full monte of great food, quiz nights, leek clubs, golf days, doms and darts and pensioner lunches.
But this is a deeply rural area and they are a drive away; the few local buses are garaged by opening time, whereas the breathalyser – correctly – is applied as sternly as it is in better-served towns and cities.
The Great British Country Pub is more than a nostalgic tradition; it is a vital part of the rural community and makes, with its B&B rooms and excellent food and drink, an incalculable contribution to the tourist trade.
No less than the Prime Minister has pledged to sustain struggling rural inns. If he puts his money where his mouth is he will be forever remembered.
As David CAMRAn!

David Banks is a regular columnist in The Journal and Press Gazette. He edited the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph (Sydney); deputy-edited The Australian; assistant-edited The Sun, Daily News (New York) and New York Post; was consultant editor of the Sunday Mirror, and has presented radio shows for LBC and Talk Radio.

The previously established model had operated successfully for generations with a benign structure of owners over managers and tenants. The people who ran these pubs were the guv’nors. They knew their business and their customers and operated as father confessors, marriage guidance counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers and alcohol abuse advisers, without realising it. All this changed with the dramatic selling-off of pubs to the newly formed pubcos, but of course, because of the 1990s recession in some areas, nobody wanted the pubs. The result was pubs were cheap and owner-operators started buying in to run their own pubs; the pub market was changing. With the rise in popularity of real ale, beer sales were improving and North Shields, for example, became a free trade boom-town with at any time up to ten pubs selling cask ales. Up to 60 different ales were on sale within walking distance. Ale trails developed from the ferry landing or the stations.

My pub, The Magnesia Bank, which I bought from a brewery, became one of them, along with The Bell and Bucket, The Wooden Doll, The Tynemouth Lodge, The Chainlocker and many others. All because pub values had fallen through the floor and pubs were boarded up.

Enough of the history lesson, let’s get bang up to date. We are the middle of a recession, we have a few property companies (pubcos) owning a large number of pubs. Pubs are being boarded up at the rate of 40 per week and guess what, pub property values have fallen through the floor. The big mistake some of the pubcos made was that they knewthe price of everything and the value of nothing. While they inflated the price of the bricks and mortar, thus increasing the potential rental value, they ensured the pubs’ failure, because they didn’t understand the real asset value of a pub is the guv’no.

So, history is repeating itself. Now is the moment you young entrepreneurs can buy into the pub property market. Learn your trade and give the customer the benefit of your product knowledge.

I always found that meeting the needs of the minority in a group of people dictates where the rest go. For instance, take any group of blokes; the cask ale drinkers will dictate where the lager drinkers go, and the vegetarian dictates where the diners go. Charge a fair price, but always offer value for money and you’ve got a sound business. And help put the British pub back to where it’s meant to be; at the centre of the community.

However, VAT is to go up from 17.5% to 20% next January. We seem to spend more and more time in the pub trade responding to price increases from government, the brewers and other suppliers. Much of that response is trying to keep prices down, because every cost rise now makes the difference between supermarket prices and pubs greater – and this is, I believe, the biggest threat facing the pub. It is also leading to national drunkenness. We have just passed a crunch point in a very important chart – that of percentage of alcoholic drinks bought in pubs and clubs and that bought in supermarkets and off licences. The second has passed the first for the first time in history, and shows no sign of changing direction.

This is partly because supermarkets sell alcohol at, in many cases, ridiculously cheap – irresponsibly cheap – prices. They are the cause of the binge-drinking culture and the Chancellor should have started to change that pattern by forcing supermarkets to sell at higher prices. Supermarkets often don’t put up prices of alcoholic drinks, forcing suppliers to absorb increases or absorbing increases themselves. We need a national campaign against cheap alcohol. The pub trade would not be influenced by action against supermarkets, as prices have to be higher in pubs because the costs are higher. Pubs can’t afford to loss-lead their main products or they would close.

Any legislation would only affect the off-trade (and maybe one or two rogue cut-price pub companies). In fact, that is now a serious matter – pubs closing. It has hit home to merecently with one of the two pubs in my village closed and to be knocked down for housing. Terrible. So, good pub-goer reading this rant, you need to do everything you can to prevent your favourite pub closing.

One piece of business most pub landlords ignore is take-home trade – which has the added benefit of reducing supermarket trade. Get every pub you go into to start stocking two-pint take-out containers to put a couple of pints in for later. Every pub should also offer a take-home service at reduced prices to challenge the off-trade, plus, top of the list should be 36-pint ‘polypins’ of real ale for parties – which supermarkets don’t sell (yet!). But why didn’t the Chancellor hit the higher paid more by increasing income tax at the top end? That was an obvious move and would also bring a little more equality. The country is in a financial crisis and the well-off should be
happy to pump in more cash. Answer– it’s a Tory government, of course! But, the budget is going to destroy many jobs and hold back incomes; lower and middle-income people are going to find their disposable income squeezed savagely. That means even more will be tempted to buy cheap supermarket booze. So pub operators need, more than ever, to be aware of price-sensitivity. They need to have as many promotions as possible, keep prices as low as possible by trying to get even better deals from suppliers, and make sure they’re selling the things people want to buy, not necessarily the cheapest they can buy. And, most important, it’s called marketing; some of the bigger pub companies are not good at it.

There you are, then. I’ve managed to write a whole article and never give our wonderful, brilliant, fantastic, tremendous pubs in The Head Of Steam group a plug! It only leaves me to wish all at Cheers! the very best of luck for the future – pub customers in the North East have needed something like this for years. Cheers!