ALL a pub needs is alcohol, toilets and, in a perfect world, seats. But your local hostelry thinks you want more. Here’s the unnecessary pub stuff that will quickly get on your tits.
Spirit promotions
Always a new brand of vodka you’ll never drink again called ‘Ice Wolf’ or something equally wank. Your evening will be made a misery by incessant vodka propaganda on the pub’s speakers. And the women in hotpants handing out shots don’t want to shag you, they want to turn you into an alcoholic.
Historical local prints
Invariably of some dull local street in 1911. Why you’d want to see a featureless, deserted version of the road just outside is unclear. It’s like people in 2150 putting up pictures of pedestrian crossings and LED bus signs and finding them f**king fascinating.
Pie and a Pint Night
Regulars attendees become incapable of talking about anything other than Pie Night, so their conversation will be things like: ‘We both had steak and kidney’, ‘Lots of nice big bits of chicken’ or simply ‘Lovely pie’. It’s as if their horizons have shrunk. You’d have some respect for them if it was Pie and TS Eliot Night, Pie and the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky Night, and or even Pie and Heroin Night.
Board games
Did you go out to get pissed like an adult, or did you want to relive a tedious Christmas when you were eight and your family played endless, joyless games of Game of Life? It’s probably not the latter, is it?
A local celebrity
Not even an ex-member of S Club 7, ‘local celebrities’ plumb bathyspherical new depths. They’re likely to be called ‘Eric the Banjo Man Wilcox’ and do local charity work. Eric will intersperse his banjo tunes with ‘amusing’ anecdotes like meeting Fiona Bruce and forgetting her name. The bored audience will be too polite to tell him to f**k off, which is a shame because he desperately needs a wake-up call.
Karaoke night
The pub is basically handed over to a hardcore of show-offs who think they can sing. It’s particular painful if the pub is small, so you’re forced to give up trying to have a conversation and listen to a squawked-out version of Up Where We Belong. In fairness, karaoke nights do pull in the punters. But so did Brexit, David Koresh and the Nazis.
