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For a
mature student, very mature, actually,

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and I'm in my last year doing
a professional, creative writing course,

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I am not going to talk to you
about writing today.

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In fact,
I've come here to make a confession.

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I rather like going to the pub,

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having a couple of beers
and talking to my mates.

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We could have a chat.

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And of course, given
my sort of senior age,

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we talk about the serious, world
shattering events like

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who got kicked off of first Strictly
Come Dancing last night.

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Or another thing we like to talk about
is all our various ailments

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because we do have a lot
and a weekly visit to the doctor .

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But at the moment,
actually my little circle of friends,

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the most compelling subject we talk about
is which of the local chip shops

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does the best chips.

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So we really enjoy getting together
and having a chat.

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I mean, we call it having a natter,

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but I believe the technical term
these days is socializing.

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And the reason I want to talk today

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is because I am very worried that.

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Myself and future

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generations,
they're not going to be able to do this

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because where is the one place
you can get together

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with your friends and talk
well it's in the pub.

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And I am really worried
that the British pub is disappearing.

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And what is even more
worrying is you'll have heard

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it suggested that the coffee shops
are going to take over.

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I mean, think about it.

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I mean, we have this grand tradition,
the British pub.

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And we are in danger of losing it.

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The facts are quite simple.

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Since the turn of the present century,

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pubs have been closing weekly

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in 2016 2017, for instance,

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37 pubs a week were closing.

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00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:41,480
Well, it's not quite so bad.

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The last figures I saw
it was about 18 pubs a week,

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but only yesterday my paper I was reading.

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That CAMRA the Campaign for Real Ale claim

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that a pub closes in Britain
every twelve hours.

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Now, why is this really important?

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Well, it's because the pub is a place

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that helps us with welfare
and a nice feeling.

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I mean, it's not just me that believes
that it's good mentally to go to the pub.

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I'm not advocating
everybody drinks gallons,

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a couple of pints is quite enough.

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But what I do suggest is a moderate drink.

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Talking to your friends.

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It makes you feel more relaxed.

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It's good for the mind. It's
good for the health.

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And it's not just me that pleads this.

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The Oxford University
carried out some research,

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and they came up to the conclusion
that some moderate drinking

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helps with social integration,

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and the pub plays
an important role in any village or town.

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And it's a place for convisual conversation, and it also attracts visitors.

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So. The thing is,

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if you haven't got the pub,
what have you got?

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You've got the coffee shop and I can't
really see that being a replacement.

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I mean, I find it frightening
that I have also read somebody suggested

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that by 2025,
there are going to be more coffee

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shops in Britain than pubs.

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I mean, an American invention,
for God's sake.

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I mean,
we have this great British tradition.

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I mean, the British pub
is from time in memoriam Well,

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now that's not actually true,
to be honest.

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The longest surviving
pub credited would be the old trip

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to Jerusalem in Nottingham,
which was opened in 1189.

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That's 830 years ago.

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And contrary to what
some of you might believe.

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No, I wasn't there for the opening. But

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now, I
remember when I first went into a pub.

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Things have changed a lot.

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I mean, it was a sort of really dark
and dingy place,

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a sort of wooden bar and nicotine
all on the ceilings

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and, you know, dirty old tables,
few uncomfortable chairs.

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And if you looked around
there would be a couple of old chaps

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in one corner playing cribbage,
which was a card game or maybe dominoes

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over the other side
there would be a couple of

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other chaps throwing darts at a dartboard
and people sat around, maybe couples

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with a wife or maybe even a foursome
sat around having a natter.

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And that was a pub.

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And of course, the one big difference was

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you never saw a single woman
going into that pub.

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No, it was not.

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Well, I can't remember once a single woman
coming into the pub while I was in.

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I'll always remeber
this is was quite funny.

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She came in
holding a lovely plate of food.

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It was a Sunday dinner

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and she got a knife and fork in her hand
as she walked straight up to the bar,

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plonked it down in front of this
man and said, here you spend more time

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in the pub than you do at home.

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You can have your dinner here,

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and I must admit I really admired him
when he turned around and said.

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Well,
have you brought the salt and pepper then?

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So, talking food in pubs,
you could get food in those days

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providing you wanted a packet of crisps,
pickled egg or packet of peanuts.

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But then things changed.

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There was a new invention in the 1960s.

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It was called a teenager
and it was more than that.

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It was a teenager with money to spend
and the pubs weren't slow to notice this,

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and so so all of a sudden out
went the old piano.

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Out went the dartboard

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and out went the sawdust off the floor,

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and in its place came the jukebox,

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the pool table, and new drinks

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lager, keg beer.

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And they began

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and life was changed

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and pubs flourished
and then they thought of,

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we must do some good food
and landladies started producing food.

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And you could get exotic dishes,
chicken and chips in a basket.

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Scampi in a basket.

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Never quite understood

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why soup in a basket never caught on,
but everything improved.

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And then, you know, pubs were flourishing,
making lots of money.

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It was great.

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So why did it all stop?

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Well, if you remember long ago.

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Every town had its own brewery.

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I mean, Grimsby,
we had Hewits, near the town hall.

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But then along came a firm called
Charringtons, a bigger brewery,

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and they bought Hewits.

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And then lo and behold, two years later,

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another brewery bigger than Charringtons
came and bought Charringtons.

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And what happened was you ended up with
about five brewery companies in Britain.

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Now, the government didn't like that
because it was a monopoly,

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and the governments don't like monopolies.

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So they had one of their investigations
and said, right what we'll do

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is we'll limit
every brewery to just 2000 pubs.

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So all the breweries had to sell off
lots of their pubs to get down to 2000.

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And in fact, one Boddingtons in Manchester

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decided to heck with this.

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And they sold all their pubs, and said we're just going to concentrate on brewing.

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So with all these pubs for sale,
what happened,

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we saw the upsurge of something
called the pub co, or pub companies.

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And these were companies
that got nothing to do with brewing.

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They just came along, bought ten, 20,
100 200 pubs and run them as chains.

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I mean, you'd be familiar
with some of them.

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I mean, Wetherspoons,

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Punch Taverns, Stone Gate.

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All of these firms
shot up all over the country

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because it was a license to print money.

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I mean pubs were profitable,
making lots of cash, but suddenly

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they found that some of these pubs
weren't quite profitable as they thought.

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And in fact, between 1990 and 2017,

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nearly half of the pubs that the pub
companies took over went out of business.

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So what exactly stopped all this?

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Well, it started,
I think, in 2007 with the smoking ban.

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All of a sudden,
you couldn't smoke in pubs

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and in those days there were a lot
more smokers than we have now.

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And so they thought, hang about if I can't
smoke, I'm not going to go to the pub

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and the supermarkets were a bit quick
and thought hang about, if we sell cheap

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alcohol,
people will buy from us and drink at home.

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And that's exactly what happened.

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Lots of people stayed at home
because they could get the

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beer and spirits and things,

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at about half or a third of the price
that they were paying in the pub.

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And really, quite honestly,
that was then made worse

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by the recession in 2008,
when we were all very short of money,

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which I'm
sure some of you will remember. And

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so. More

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people bought beer from the supermarket,
instead of the pub.

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And to be quite honest,
that's continued to this day.

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Then what happened?

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Well, of course, taxes went up.

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The duty on alcohol went up again

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and, business rates
rocketed for these pubs,

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I mean,
all these pubs are quite big places,

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and they took a lot of ground
and the business rates were quite big.

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So more biting into the profits
of the pubs and all they could do

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then is put up the price of beer
and drinks.

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Then came the minimum wage and every time.

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In fact, the minimum wage came about
if I remember rightly about 1998.

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But more or less almost yearly,
it seemed to increase.

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And of course, being a lowly,
you know, basically a lowly paid

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sort of business working in pubs.

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The minimum wage going up to
what is it now £10,

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something an hour
has had a real effect on their profits.

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And that is why so many pubs have closed

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because they just
are no longer profitable.

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What frightens me is this

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suggestion that the coffee bar
could take over from the pub.

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I mean, you can't socialize
in a coffee bar.

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I mean, I went into the coffee bar
the other day and looking around me,

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there was one guy on the laptop
in one corner and

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there was three
people who had got these tablets.

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Either looking on Facebook or

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texting. I don't know what.

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And then two or three people with phones

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and they were either
texting or on the phone.

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There were two people in that place
apart from myself,

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and that was an old man and old woman,
they have obviously been

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married for years,
and they even speak to each other.

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I mean, is that socializing?

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And I found it worrying, really, because

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that kind of culture.

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I mean, I've read this.

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I thought this was actually an April fools
when I first read it,

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but it was a coffee bar
opened in Westminster called Jasu.

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And it's fame because it charges.

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It's the most expensive coffee
you can buy.

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So if anybody fancies
a cup of coffee at £30,

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Jasu is a place to go.

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I should warn you.

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This coffee is actually the product
of the Jasu Bird, who eats the coffee

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beans, and then they come out through
the natural system of any bird or person.

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And then these pellets are picked up

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ground and turned into coffee, which,

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according to this article
I read, is the most tasty you can get.

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So if you really want this, you know,
and you can't get to London

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because it's a long way from here,
really, isn't it?

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00:24:57,800 --> 00:24:58,920
Don't worry.

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It is available from Harrods
by mail order at £1400 a kilogram.

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00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:08,080
If anybody wants it,
so I mean, if people are like that

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and they are seriously saying it's
going to replace the pub, it worries me.

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I mean,

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I remember

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00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:20,040
a survey carried out
by the Harvard University.

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It started in 1939,

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and it got 200

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00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:31,920
sophomore students from Harvard
and 200 other guys from the backstreets

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of Boston, Massachusetts,

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all 19 years old, and they decided that
they would monitor them

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for basically the rest of their lives
every year they would trade.

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And they did.

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And obviously,

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some of the guys from Harvard
did quite well and went up in the world.

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Some didn't do quite so well,
and it was the same

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with the guys from Boston, some of them
achieved lots of things some didn't.

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In fact, one guy

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actually became president of America
so that we didn't do too badly.

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But they found out through the survey

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that those who said that they socialized
and had pleasant,

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good relationships with people,
they live longer and a happier life

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and had good relationships.

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The ones who claim to be loners.

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Had poor health, their memories
were worse, and they died earlier.

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So socializing is important.

240
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And I would suggest
that the place to socialize is a pub.

241
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You know, not the coffee bars,
but a good old chat in the pub

242
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and a couple of pints and you're well off,

243
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which
in fact I've been stood here talking.

244
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And to be quite honest,
I'm feeling a little bit thirsty now,

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so I think I'll go for a cup of coffee.

246
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:43,840
Well, I would do if this thing would work.

247
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:45,400
Oh, well.

248
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:47,520
Well, actually,
I don't think I'll go for a cup of coffee.

249
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I think I'll go for a pint.
Thank you for listening.