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00:00Music
00:20The pub, a mainstay of British society since medieval times,
00:25ranked alongside the church as a cornerstone of any community.
00:29The pub is sort of a halfway house between being in your own home and being out.
00:34It's so ingrained in our culture that it has played a unique role in national life.
00:40It's a place where people come together in a way that's entirely different from any other forum.
00:45Here you can laugh like a clown and still hear it last in the crowd.
00:50And when a sailor comes home, everyone turns out for a celebration.
00:55But in the past 50 years, the pub has undergone massive change.
00:59As society has shifted and fragmented, the pub has had to become increasingly sophisticated to keep up.
01:05Throughout history, people have written off the pub.
01:07All the pub is doomed, the pub will disappear.
01:10The pub is fantastically adaptable.
01:12But has it lost something in the process?
01:16Can the core values of such a defining British institution survive all this change?
01:22Or, like a cumbersome dinosaur, are the pub's days now numbered?
01:27Far too many have gone.
01:29It's the strong ones that have stayed there.
01:32And the strong ones just mustn't go.
01:39Last orders, please, ladies and gentlemen.
01:42Tina's not the best dart player in the world, but she enjoys a game while she's waiting for me.
01:54After a match, we often meet our wife for a quiet drink in the local.
01:57It's a nice friendly place.
01:59Tina reckons I've rigged the darts.
02:02It's not true.
02:04Anyway, it's great to get together for an evening out.
02:07Like Mr and Mrs Bobby Moore, looking at the locals.
02:16The heyday of the British pub was during World War II,
02:19when it was regarded as a crucial part of the war effort.
02:23The pub was a symbol of British life and what we stood for,
02:26and it was a symbol of a way of life that was under threat.
02:28And so long as the pub was open the morning after a bombing raid or whatever,
02:31it showed that we hadn't been beaten, it showed that we were still going.
02:34And this is why you had bomb sites where you would have a landlord getting two beer barrels
02:39and putting a plank over the top of them and opening for business.
02:4325 years earlier in the Great War, it was a very different story.
02:46The pub and drinking were seen as a hindrance to the war effort.
02:49We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and the greatest of these deadly foes is drink.
03:02But by World War II, even women had found their way to the pub.
03:06And my first experience as a tiny, tiny baby in World War II was being smuggled into a pub in Norfolk.
03:12My mother would put me under the bench, and it was, I mean, she wasn't a heavy drinker,
03:16she hardly drank at all, but it was the only place to go to.
03:19Everywhere was blacked out, you couldn't have lights,
03:22there were no cinemas in small towns or villages, so people went to the pub.
03:28The pub became a hub for the community, it became a place where everyone went,
03:32and everyone gathered together, and social barriers came down hugely.
03:37After the war, there was a period of decline for the pub,
03:41as building materials were rationed and wages low.
03:44But during the 50s and early 60s, the pub continued to be central to working-class communities,
03:50though it was still predominantly a male preserve.
03:53It's better than being in there, it's been nagged all the while by a wife, I should say myself,
03:57if you understand what I mean.
03:59They got away from home, because the conditions were bad.
04:03They'd been hard at work, most of them had got big families,
04:07and I think they got into the pub to forget all the troubles.
04:12Huge populations all kind of did the same sort of jobs at the same time,
04:16it was a very regimented existence, obviously, so people would work together,
04:19they'd come out of the factories and the mines and they'd want to play together,
04:23so they would all go to the same pubs, everyone knew each other,
04:26everyone knew the landlord, everyone knew each other's names.
04:28In the West Midlands here, I mean, what they commonly call a black country there,
04:33it's all a manual labour sort of thing, there's hard-working chaps.
04:37Well, that was the end joint.
04:39If they could get in the booth on the weekend, congregate together, that's what they enjoy.
04:46I remember going to a pub opposite the steelworks in Redcar,
04:51and at five to six the barman started pulling pints,
04:56and the entire length of this long bar was covered in pints of beer.
05:00At six o'clock the whistle blew, and this vast flood of men came out of the steelworks into the pub,
05:06and I just, woof, the beer just disappeared in one gulp and was immediately replenished,
05:11because they'd been working for eight hours in the most amazingly gruelling hot atmosphere.
05:16Satisfying, you know, you're satisfying, you have a good drink, you're good company.
05:21The Germans called beer liquid bread, and I've always thought that's a wonderful description of beer,
05:26because it is exactly that, it's made from very much the same ingredients that go into bread making,
05:31apart from the hops of course, but you're using grain and you're using yeast.
05:36And certainly, for a very long time, beer was seen as a staple part of the British diet.
05:42As the sixties progressed, there was new competition for the pub.
05:47Restaurants became more accessible and popular, but there were also reasons to stay at home,
05:52with more people buying televisions and the emergence of supermarkets and off-licenses selling cheap alcohol.
05:59For every housewife with time to spare, there's another in a hurry, and the off-license is built for her.
06:07Without entering bars, with no loss of time, this shop provides the service she is used to and needs.
06:14The public house needed to keep up, which meant breweries had to change.
06:19Most pubs were owned by a network of 3,000 small breweries.
06:24But in the sixties, a Canadian entrepreneur called Eddie Taylor bought up scores of these small businesses
06:30to create a huge conglomerate called Bash Charrington.
06:35The British brewing industry, which had always been run as pretty much a gentleman's club before he came along,
06:41was really in shock at the whole effects that he had.
06:45And if you were a medium-small brewery, if you didn't want to be taken over by Eddie Taylor,
06:50you had to form a big group of your own that was too big for him to take over.
06:54So within the space of about 12-15 years, the British brewing industry changed from being a network of local brewers,
07:02all with local pubs in a little area, to being six big brewers who, between them, owned 72% of the market.
07:09The big six started to produce beer in a way that would maximise profits.
07:14It looks more like the control panel of the QE2.
07:17But instead of directing the course of a new liner, this complicated collection of dials, meters and flashing lights
07:23is the nerve centre for the time-honoured traditional process of brewing beer.
07:28The five-section, present-shaped electronic control panel is in operation to make sure that every pint tastes as good as the last.
07:36The one thing you don't see much of in this £7 million brewery is beer.
07:41Everything is under stainless steel wraps from the moment the malt is screened through the entire process
07:46when it emerges as beer three or four days later.
07:50This new spirit of technological innovation in the brewing world went hand in hand with a powerful new force in society
07:58that would change music, fashion, art and culture. The youth explosion of the 1960s.
08:05The 1960s was the time of revolt. It was really the time when young working-class people said, you know,
08:23we're no longer going to be considered to be second-class citizens.
08:27I mean, this was when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones burst on the scene
08:30and suddenly everything was about young working-class culture.
08:34And so they didn't want to go to pubs where their parents drank, they wanted to go to pubs for them.
08:39And so you had the development of pubs catering solely for young people.
08:44During the 60s and 70s, many pubs were demolished or remodelled to cater for this new era.
08:54Anything modern was a sign that we were a vibrant modern economy, really pushing forward to the future.
09:00And so anything traditional just got kind of swept by the wayside. It wasn't good.
09:04So anything plastic was fantastic and you could just kind of get rid of pottery, get rid of old glass,
09:11get rid of anything Victorian or antique and replace it with stripped-down, minimalist, cheap plastic.
09:17Anyone thought it was great?
09:21So you'd get theme pubs coming through and pubs designed to look like all sorts of garish Caribbean cocktail lounges
09:28or futuristic places or Wild West saloons, anything other than a pub.
09:32All in the hope of attracting young people in and getting to spend a bit more.
09:36It's hard to imagine this. You would have pubs designed like a Russian Sputnik.
09:40There was one pub which was designed to look like a pineapple.
09:43And the most astonishing things were going on, totally destroying the whole atmosphere and architecture of beautiful pubs.
09:52I don't know how they got away with it. Many of those pubs must have been listing.
10:02Well, already the bulldozers are getting to work. And in a couple of days' time, the Nelson, the British Queen and the Welcome In will be no more.
10:12Those pubs are not just physical landmarks, they're social landmarks too.
10:16And without them, it'll be just that little bit more difficult for the people who come back to Hankey Park to find their bearings again.
10:23Most of the interiors of these pubs would have been lost forever if it hadn't been for the foresight of entrepreneurs like Andy Thornton,
10:41who after a spell abroad returned to the UK at the right time to capitalise on what was going on.
10:48In 1975, we came back to England. We had a small amount of capital, £4,000 saved.
10:53And I used that to go around and buy up old pub fittings and salvage from demolition contractors and from contractors who were being paid by the breweries to rip out these Victorian interiors.
11:06There was no demand for it, nobody wanted this stuff. So I could buy it very cheaply. So I was able to, for very little capital, get the business started.
11:17And it's a great shame I sighted it so late. There were one or two other people buying a few pieces then, but most of it was just burnt or scrapped.
11:25This is an old mahogany pub front. It came from the east end of London. Originally it would have had the cutting edge glass windows in here and cutting edge glass panels in the door.
11:37We will replace those with the appropriate cutting edge glass once it's sold.
11:45I remember I bought two fantastic tile pub fronts and they were hard to dismantle. I had to scaffold the whole pub front and dismantle them and label them all.
11:55Sort of tile by tile dismantle it. As I say, they would have just been bulldozed if we hadn't salvaged them.
12:03In the new look pubs, traditional landlords were replaced by brewery controlled managers.
12:13Trevor Ratten, like his colleagues, lives rent free, hands over all the profits of the brewery, earns upwards of £2,000 a year plus bonuses, but can be sacked at one month's notice.
12:24The big six breweries now owned thousands of pubs, but each brewer wanted their pubs to have a shared identity.
12:33They mistakenly decided to go down the corporate brand imaging of pubs so that all pubs owned by say Watneys looked exactly the same from one end of the country to the other.
12:43They became a bit like petrol stations. You were supposed to get people in, either drink them or feed them and get them out rather than having a nice, comfortable, relaxed atmosphere.
12:52Join the red revolution and get with it.
12:55Thousands of less profitable smaller pubs went out of business at this time and the landlord, once seen as the key character at the heart of any pub, began to seem an endangered spirit.
13:10Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to watch while Mike poses out a bottle of beer. Now, come on, Mike.
13:26Now, now, now, now, now, now. You really do know better than that, don't you? Let's start all over again with another one. Take it carefully. Don't put the glass and bottle together. Just pour the beer nicely, easily.
13:52Pickle it just a little to the finish. Bring up a glass of beer so that it looks really nice and pass it to your customer without putting the fingers around the top of the glass.
14:03Now, you have got that right, haven't you?
14:05I do think that the landlord's absolutely central to the identity of the British pub. Traditionally, we've always had quite quirky or barking landlords or maybe bawdy landladies. Certainly, if you go back historically, they were often running brothels as well. And there are great characters in, say, Shakespeare. I think we like this feeling that there's a master of ceremonies who's leading the revels. He's a bit of a sort of backers figure, really.
14:32For centuries, the pub landlord had been all things to all men. He was not only a businessman but a psychologist, policeman, diplomat, social worker and counsellor.
14:42My role really is mixing it all up, keeping it all going, talking to people. Gentleman that comes into the bar and sits at the bar, he wants to have a chat. Gentleman that sits away, gets his newspaper out, he wants to be left alone.
15:00Couples coming in not knowing one another, they go out of here knowing one another, maybe exchanging addresses. It is keeping the whole thing moving, interaction.
15:12He's an omnipotent figure. You can get real hard men in a pub and the landlord just has to kind of just do that and they'll be quiet and control them all.
15:21His character, his personality can imbue the whole pub and really create that atmosphere. You see marketing men thinking, right, how can we create this ambience, this kind of big emotional benefit.
15:31If you've got a colourful character as a landlord, then he just does it automatically without thinking.
15:36If it's a passion, then you make a good landlord. It could be a passion for people as well as a passion for real ale. If you've got a passion for life, you will make a good landlord.
15:49But if you're doing it as a job for a roof over your head with your electric and gas paid for by the brewery, then you ain't going to make it sunshine.
15:58In the mid-70s, as the traditional landlord was being phased out, drinkers started to become vocal about the activities of the big brewers.
16:07The powers at me just seem as though they don't take a personal consideration, they don't consider the customers.
16:13This will all come back eventually because these places aren't going to make any money.
16:17They are not. I agree.
16:18If these managers and managed houses don't have any people in and people don't drink, it's going to come back, they're going to banter it.
16:24This is absolutely right.
16:26It was in remote rural areas where closing unprofitable pubs hit hardest.
16:32When the brewers closed the sun, the landlady couldn't afford to run it as a free house.
16:37But she bought the pub for a home and now any old customer is still always welcome to pop in.
16:42And these days, drinks are always on the house for old regulars like Charlie Large.
16:46Do you know what this is now?
16:48What?
16:49The pub with no beer.
16:50Well, it is.
16:51Yeah.
16:52Charlie Wright calls in sometimes.
16:53Yeah.
16:54Yeah.
16:55Where did you sit?
16:56Where?
16:57Well, sit over there.
16:58That's his seat.
16:59That's his seat.
17:00My seat over there.
17:01Yes, that's his seat.
17:02What a difference.
17:03Look round there and see it empty now and all the times we had in there.
17:08Make you cry.
17:09Very sad.
17:10Well, it used to be the most part of the room.
17:11I don't know.
17:12I don't know.
17:13Yeah.
17:14I don't know.
17:15What a difference.
17:17Look round there and see it empty now and all the times we had in here.
17:23Make you cry.
17:32Very sad.
17:38That used to be the main star of the village, the pub, that was the recreation, the meeting place, the club, everything, that's all they had in the village. Now, that's done, that's finished.
17:55In the 70s, a consumer group emerged incensed by what it saw as the poor quality of mass-produced beer and the attack on the values of the traditional pub. They called themselves Camera, the campaign for real ale.
18:10For a time, Camera were enormously successful. They rescued countless breweries and countless quality beers from extinction, really, just by putting this pressure on. And they were called, at one point, by an MP, the most successful consumer pressure group in Europe.
18:26Since we've been in business, there haven't been so many takeovers. Now, we've at least stopped the takeovers happening. We haven't reversed the process that much.
18:34But if we hadn't been for the existence of Camera, all these small breweries wouldn't be going on now. They gradually get taken over by the big ones.
18:42So, in a sense, we've held the line. We've stopped the encroachment of the keg beer, the fizzy beer, any further.
18:50Although Camera was primarily concerned about saving traditional beer and traditional breweries, there was a knock-on effect in also taking on board the need to preserve the traditional English pub.
19:01Camera had their work cut out. In the late 70s and 80s, the big brewers started a campaign to convert drinkers to lager, and they did this by aggressive television advertising.
19:11And I'll read her prescription any time.
19:16Sometimes I think the medical profession is misunderstood. I prescribe Hofmeister twice nightly.
19:22A great lager, follow the bear.
19:26Suddenly, television was saturated with images of young people in pubs drinking this new pale beer called lager.
19:34And that did have a big impact on pubs, on beer styles, and on the people who were attracted to pubs.
19:40I've turned up the local on a Saturday night.
19:44I met a girl from Birmingham, and she was all right.
19:48She was very intellectual.
19:50Suddenly, you were being offered lifestyle with lager, which was not something that beer was sold with, this kind of attitude.
20:01If you buy this very expensive lager, you will be a metropolitan sophisticate.
20:06You will have more girlfriends.
20:08Up, stay sharp, to the bottom of the glass.
20:11I said I was her brother, so we stayed and had another.
20:14And so people wanted to be optimistic.
20:17They wanted to believe you could have it all, and that a mere drink could change the way you were perceived.
20:22The cool, fresh flavour didn't waver by a quaver.
20:25I said it was a pity, but we had to hurry home, cause our eight-year-old mother was all on her own.
20:31So she kissed him very nicely, and said she'd phone.
20:34Harp, stay sharp, to the bottom of the glass. Harp, stay sharp.
20:41Drinking became ridiculous, where you'd have something like a pint of Whiplash, which was lager, cider, perno and blackcurrant.
20:50It was just medicine, you know, it was just like alcohol.
20:53It was just like norepine cold and flu in a glass, you know.
20:57And you drank it to get a pint.
21:00There's always been an England.
21:04As brewers fought harder to win over drinkers, pubs had to find new ways of getting them through the door.
21:11In the early 80s, fuelled by events like the Royal Wedding, Britain got nostalgic for heritage and tradition.
21:17pub styles went full circle, and there was a return to the old-fashioned Victorian boozer.
21:24It is ironic, isn't it, that many of the pubs that were destroyed in the 60s and 70s, lovely Victorian and Edwardian pubs,
21:32they were either raised to the ground or had their interiors destroyed.
21:35Suddenly, in the 70s and 80s, one of the themes was Victorian or Edwardian pubs.
21:40With total fakery, not proper wood, but plastic wood.
21:45Or if they were mock Tudor, they'd have plastic beams, not proper beams.
21:49And it is awful, isn't it, that brewers destroyed genuine pubs and then built mock plastic recreations of them.
21:56This interest in traditional drinking was a complex mix of old-fashioned values and commercial acumen.
22:03I have a particularly fraught relationship with the idea of the Victorian-themed pub,
22:08because this idea that was floated round about the mid to early 80s was something that very much affected my parents' business.
22:17And they were running this pub that had been virtually unchanged as it was built sometime around 1830.
22:23And along came the brewery, Friary New, which were actually part of the giant brewery, Inde Coop.
22:30And they decided that they wanted to turn our genuine Victorian pub into a mock Victorian-themed pub with diner attached.
22:40So rip out all the rather shabby and shambolic original fittings, put in brass, you know, those fake gas lamps.
22:49And, as they said at the time, uncomfortable seating that would mean that people who were eating wouldn't want to sit there for longer than an hour.
22:56But this renewed interest in Victorian pub styles was good news for Andy Thornton.
23:01When I was buying the interiors in England, I never dreamt that there would be a market in this country for them.
23:08It was amazing how the fashion cycle went round so quickly.
23:12Because, literally, I bought 300 Tetley pub signs, the big illuminated signs.
23:19And this was in the late 70s.
23:23And in the 80s, I sold them back to the brewery.
23:26In the midst of all this manufactured nostalgia, a new soap opera burst onto our TV screens.
23:32It portrayed the comforting idea of a community based around a Victorian pub.
23:38Old street was legless.
23:40You included.
23:41And you.
23:42Your old man used to lie on the floor with his mouth under the spout.
23:45Ethel Lou, have a drink.
23:47I don't mind to plant in.
23:49Very few people live like that nowadays.
23:51Very few people live their entire life within the confines of a small geographical community.
23:56But we still hiked back to it.
23:58And I think that's what the appeal is.
23:59We'd quite like to be able to go to our local and know everybody was in there.
24:03And go in and just say, yeah, pint the usual.
24:05And a few of us still do.
24:06But increasingly, a lot of us just don't live in that world anymore.
24:09And I think we'd like to.
24:10It's central to the whole British identity that good stories start in a pub.
24:15Oh, pack it in, Nick.
24:16You too, Allie.
24:17No, he started it.
24:18You all did.
24:19All day long.
24:20That's all I've heard.
24:21And I've had it right.
24:22Allie!
24:23Nick!
24:24Nick, stop it!
24:25You've got to get your messes to do it now, have you?
24:26Come on.
24:27Dan, Dan, Dan!
24:28Oi!
24:31What's the matter on here, eh?
24:32What's the matter?
24:33Get him back.
24:34Oh, Pete, be careful.
24:36Eh?
24:37You're far.
24:42Look at my shirt.
24:43Look at my bleeding shirt.
24:44Bart, stuff your poxy foes up.
24:50I think we really feel that this is important,
24:53that we are a drinking and storytelling society
24:57and that we gather together around our pints of beer
25:00and build this, you know, in some ways we build this myth of our nation
25:05round the barstools and counters of Britain.
25:09the big breweries continue to control the bulk of beer production and pub ownership.
25:18But their monopoly didn't fit with Margaret Thatcher's notions of competition and enterprise.
25:24She ordered an investigation by the monopolies and mergers commission.
25:28And their findings were damning.
25:31The domination of the big six had to stop.
25:34And the recommendations were that the big brewers had to open up their pubs to competition.
25:41That they should offer beers from other brewers.
25:44And also they should have to sell off a lot of their pubs.
25:47That no brewer should be allowed to own more than 2,000 pubs.
25:51Whereas some of the brewers own six or seven thousand pubs.
25:54So that had an amazing impact upon the whole structure of the brewing industry and the pub trade.
26:00The problem being that they didn't stipulate who could buy these pubs.
26:05And so what happened was that, you know, when you get tens of thousands of pubs
26:08all going onto the market at the same time, they were all bought up by large investment banks.
26:12And you had who created them into huge pub chains that didn't have any particular ties to brewers,
26:17but would sign exclusive deals with brewers and batten the prices down.
26:21And so we didn't really end up having that much more choice of what we drank at all.
26:25We had less.
26:26But the big sell off did open up the market to entrepreneurs ready to cater for a new breed of customer.
26:33Our target market was a very individual market, but it was also a very big one.
26:37It was the sort of people that we liked.
26:39A lot of our customers were journalists, photographers, architects that work in the area.
26:45We were also very keen to attract families.
26:48The Eagle in London's Clerkenwell was the first so-called gastropub.
26:52It opened in 1991 and appealed to a more discerning and affluent pub goer.
26:57In the 90s, Britain finally started to love food rather than just eat food.
27:03And we started to get interested in it.
27:05We started to like watching celebrity chefs on TV, buying more eclectic food and so on.
27:10But restaurants still remain expensive.
27:12So in the middle came this concept of gastropub where you can go to a pub and instead of just a really ropy old burger or a Betty's hot pot or whatever,
27:22you can get some quite decent meals.
27:24And they'll be close to restaurant prices than pub prices.
27:28But they'll be very, very nice.
27:29They'll be restaurant quality meals.
27:31Except that you're in a pub, the environment is a lot more relaxed.
27:34And this has really hit a chord with a lot of people in Britain.
27:37We now eat more meals in pubs than we do in restaurants.
27:40And that gap between the two is widening.
27:44Here, in a pub, you've got the perfect environment where people can have just what they like.
27:49They can come in and have half a pint of beer or they can come in and have the works.
27:52I have to certainly admit that I'm susceptible to the idea of coming across a pub that's suddenly serving this delicious home-cooked food.
28:00But at the same time, there are so many gastropubs now that your chance of just coming across somewhere where you can actually sit at the counter and talk to someone and just have a beer and maybe a planman's lunch is becoming scarcer and scarcer.
28:15I mean, just the other day in Cambridge, I found it impossible to get hold of a Stilton planman's lunch.
28:20That was just what I wanted.
28:21And instead, you were being offered Thai fish cakes.
28:24And if you're going to get that rather than just a hunk of bread and cheese, I think it's a sad and overpriced day for every British punter.
28:32We've always said that the person who wanted a half a pint of Guinness and a cigarette was just as welcome as the group of people that wanted a full meal.
28:41Deregulation also saw the rise of non-brewing pub companies. They too looked to target new markets.
28:49There's one chain that had this fantastic idea of making their pubs more accessible to women.
28:55So, All Bar One came along, had huge windows, had nice flowers outside, sold a decent glass of wine in a pub for the first time and nice, open, airy spaces.
29:04So women could go there and drink there in groups or on their own and feel comfortable with it.
29:08It's a great idea. I can't imagine why people hadn't had it earlier.
29:11And of course, if you create a bar where lots of women want to go and drink, that means lots of men are going to go there as well.
29:17So it was a phenomenal success.
29:19I think that women coming into pubs really on their own terms has meant that standards have generally improved.
29:25Suddenly you have much nicer ladies' toilets and maybe Andrex toilet tissue rather than that.
29:30Do you remember that horrible sort of plasticky hard paper?
29:34Just everything being, yes, I think a little bit more lavender fresh.
29:39I generally think all male environments are very, very unhealthy.
29:44We like misbehaving kids, split us up, you know, move our chairs so that we're away from each other and then put women in between.
29:52And I think it makes us better.
29:54So I think in general any environment where women are brought, I mean I think women should be allowed to use men's toilets.
30:01Because then, you know, there'd be cleaner and there'd be pot purry around and nice pictures and stuff.
30:07Did this feminisation spell the end of the pub as a male preserve?
30:12It does kind of knock the edges off a little bit in terms of this kind of male refuge.
30:16If you have the idea of the pub where the bloke goes to get away from his nagging wife, then that is a little bit under threat.
30:23There was always that idea if you look at things like Andy Capp cartoons.
30:26The wife might be waiting there at home with a rolling pin, but she could never go to the pub and get him.
30:31That would just be unthinkable. And that idea is maybe disappearing now.
30:34In fact, a bigger trend was that an older generation was being pushed out of the pub.
30:40Old pubs have been just sort of ethnically cleansed in order to allow a new generation or a new social class to use them.
30:48So, for example, an old pub in Brixton where there'd be an old bloke who'd go in and he'd sit there and he'd have his one pint at lunchtime and then he'd go home.
30:56He'd feel totally out of place there because nobody in there is over 40 unless they're a drug dealer or a police officer.
31:02And there's hardly any pubs that I know of in South London where an old geezer would feel comfortable or an old couple would go to have a bottle of stout each or something.
31:14Because they would just feel like they were in a student bar.
31:18I don't like the whole idea of young people's pubs because I really do think that I should be able to go to the same pub as young people.
31:26If I want to go out and drink with my son, why shouldn't I go out and drink with my son?
31:29But I know that here in St Albans in Hertfordshire that there are some pubs at weekends which have bouncers on the doors, not to keep young people out, but to keep me out.
31:39They won't let me in because I'm too old and that's absurd, you know, and I really strongly object to that.
31:45In a culture dominated by the young, high energy socialising had replaced old fashioned discourse.
31:52I don't know, no one seems to talk to each other anymore. You can't have, people look at you weirdly if you sort of say,
31:57Oh, I, did you see that news? It was terrible. It was like, what? This is, it's party time, you know, it's the end of history.
32:04We're all working in, in, in PR. We're all drunk, you know, we don't, we're not interested.
32:10We're not interested in what's just happened in Iraq, you know, it's, it's happy hour.
32:16During the nineties, the pub companies continued to expand and gobble up existing pubs and their identities.
32:23One casualty of this was the pub name.
32:28A lot of people get incensed when pub names change and I absolutely agree.
32:32It enrages me because pub names are almost always a good indicator of local history.
32:38If you're called the Duke of Wellington, it's probably because the Duke of Wellington has some local connection.
32:42And if you're called the two fighting cocks, it's because cockfighting was held there once.
32:48pubs with bear in it, with bear in their name somewhere, nearly always denote in London that they were near to some bear baiting pit.
32:57And you just lose that if you give it some silly slug and lettuce name, don't you? It's meaningless.
33:02Brewers would come along or pub owners would come along and they'd just throw it into the bin.
33:07And they'd suddenly call it the Floozian Firkin.
33:10And they'd give it some totally horrendous name, which had no history, no meaning in many cases.
33:17And it was often deeply insulting.
33:20And there were big battles over that in the 80s and 90s that whole communities would take on the Brewer and say,
33:27you're not going to destroy that pub name.
33:29But when they tried to change the name of the Castle Pub here in Newbury, the men in suits discovered they had a battle on their hands.
33:36It's an 18th century building and the name commemorates the fact that it stands very close to the historic Donington Castle.
33:43And we felt that to change it to the sort of name that they gave it, the Pig in Hiding, with the awful decor of pink plastic pigs all over it,
33:51was an insult to local people and people who used the pub.
33:54Well, it should never have changed, really, because from here you can see the Castle Donington anyway.
33:58So it should never have changed.
33:59That's a silly name, Pig in Hiding.
34:01I don't know where it came from.
34:03Following a local ballot, the Pig in Hiding was voted out by over 700 votes to three.
34:09The castle was restored to its former glory in the first stand against the modern theme pub.
34:14What's the worst name change you've ever heard?
34:16Oh, well, there was a case down in Trowbridge recently where a pub chain got hold of a pub called the Twelve Bells and renamed it the Brewer's Droop.
34:24By the 21st century, pubs had become a branch of the retail trade. The local was now truly national.
34:33Our country is becoming more homogenous. It's getting so that whatever town you go to, the high street looks the same.
34:41You can go to a town you've never been to before and you can almost predict what order the shops are going to be in, just from your knowledge.
34:46And the pub held out. The pub was more resistant to this than a lot of other retail establishments were, but ultimately the pub is going the same way.
34:55Although it's disturbing that everywhere looks the same, it's also vaguely comforting.
34:59You know, you can go in a pub that looks very like the pub in the last place you went and will sell the same stuff.
35:07And you kind of feel you can go into those places on your own as well. A traditional pub, you might, in this country especially, you might go in and everyone's very welcoming.
35:21Or you might go in and everyone turns around and says, you're not from Ramon East, but you, there is, even in London, you'll see, oh, this looks like a marvellous pub.
35:31It's traditional, earthly people. Let's go in there and sit with some ordinary people. And you go in and everyone looks around and looks at you like, you don't get it, do you, son? This ain't your pub. This is our pub.
35:43Even in an increasingly commercial and branded world, it seems that there are enough people still willing to make a stand for the traditional values of the pub.
35:52And perhaps, therefore, the public house will continue to be reinvented as the focal point of communities.
35:59This pub is very much at the heart of the community. It caters for the workers here, the journalists and the photographers and the architects.
36:06But it also caters for the people that live here. And people meet here. They come in here on their own and meet friends here.
36:14And it does exactly what pubs always should have done in the past.
36:19This pub is certainly like a melting pot of the village, if you like. We have millionaires talking to ground workers. We get tree workers, agricultural workers talking to office people, company directors, doctors, dentists.
36:35Everyone comes into here and everyone talks to one another. It's not a matter of money. It's a matter of people.
36:42It's all too fragmented. I don't think of the pub as an institution. There are pubs and they're sort of disparate and disconnected and they're not part of my world in the way that they were.
36:56Anyone who thinks that the pub is in decline should go to a pub when there's a big international sporting event on.
37:03This shows we need these community links and bonds. We can watch these events at home. We can buy a six pack from the supermarket. And we don't do that.
37:11We go to a pub which is absolutely packed. Cue 20 minutes for a drink, another 20 minutes for the toilet and get jostled about.
37:18Because we have to be part of this community. We have to be part of a big group of people all experiencing the same thing.
37:24It's almost pointless to watch a big England game if you're not in a pub watching it.
37:29Society is changing its shape and changing the way it looks and the way it works. And the pub is changing to reflect that. The pub is a mirror of society.
37:37So instead of having the community pub at the end of your road now where everyone goes, you'll have a sports pub in town and all the guys who are into sport will go there.
37:44And then you'll have the gastropub here and all the people who are fancying a nice meal will go there.
37:49And so we won't have one local anymore, but we will have different communities and different centres of interest.
37:54And we'll go to different pubs at different times depending on what the mood takes us.
38:07Of course.
38:09We've got a big problem here.
38:10I've got a big problem here.
38:12And then you go to different places.
38:13We've got a big problem here.
38:14And I'll see you next week.
38:17I'm Danell Faso.
38:18And I'm Danell Faso.
38:19And you're in the process with celebrating the new pub.
38:21And the rest of the day is coming to you.
38:24And in terms of secrets, we have a big deal here.
38:25And we'll see you next week.
38:26We're really good.
38:27We'll have to be a big deal, so we can get it.
38:29So we can get it.
38:30We can get it.
38:33We can get it.
38:34And we'll get it.
38:35We can get it.
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