Category Archives: beer in fiction / tv

What did John Lennon say about beer?

The Beatles in the pub.

‘Two lagers and lime and… two lagers and lime, please.’ Help (1965)

Nev, who recently made 800 posts on his long-running beer and music blog, mentioned the other day, in passing, a quotation from John Lennon that we’d not previously come across:

The price of fame is not being able to go to the Phil for a quiet pint.

‘The Phil’ is the Philharmonic, a pub in Liverpool. We love the Beatles almost as much as we love beer and pubs, so we liked this a lot, but we’ve also been fretting about sources a lot recently. Aware that 99 per cent of beer quotes, just like statistics, are either made up or inaccurate, we decided to look into it.

The fact is, we can’t find any reference to where or when Lennon is supposed to have said the above. Some websites quote other websites. Most just say that he ‘famously’ said it, or that he said it ‘once’ to a reporter. The earliest reference in print, according to Google Books, is the Let’s Go guide to Europe from 2000. That doesn’t mean he didn’t say it, but we can’t help wondering if the attribution ought to be a clever brewery PR man or pub landlord. Chris Routledge had this to say on the subject:

Did Lennon talk about beer, pubs or pints at all? We did find this interview from 1971 which includes a classic bit of Lennonian belligerence:

As kids we were all opposed to folk songs because they were so middle-class. It was all college students with big scarfs and a pint of beer in their hands singing folk songs in what we call la-di-da voices-’I worked in a mine in New-cast-le’ and all that shit… mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It’s all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group. Today’s folk song is rock and roll.

We think he’s trying to wind up Nev and Phil, and pre-emptively taking a pop at CAMRA two months before they even existed. He certainly manages to give ‘pint of beer’ a particularly sneering spin.

Astrid Kirchher, a friend from the Beatles’ time in Hamburg in the early sixties, recalled, in the 1996 Anthology TV series, that, when Lennon drank beer as young man, it was because it was cheap, and a particularly effective accompaniment to Preludin pills (uppers). In the accompanying book, also talking about Hamburg, Paul McCartney says the he was the last to make the move (the upgrade?) to taking drugs, having said, until then: ‘Oh, I’ll stick to the beer, thanks.’

If you happen to know the interview where Lennon mentioned ‘the Phil’, or have come across him or any Beatle saying anything else about beer or pubs, we’d love to know. You might also enjoy this longish piece on rock music and pubs which mentions Ringo.

Lovely, lovely ale, mainstay of the North

Laurence Harvey in the pub in the film of Room at the Top.

John Braine’s 1957 ‘angry young man’ novel Room at the Top isn’t as fashionable now as once it was. We took our copy down from the shelf looking for examples of the word ‘ale’ being used in preference to ‘beer’ up north and realised just how much the book relies on pubs and drinking to make (rather heavy-handed) points about social mobility and class.

For example, when  the ruthlessly social climbing working class orphan, Joe Lampton, returns to his generically northern home town of Dufton for Christmas, he goes to the pub with Charles, a childhood friend.

The Siege Gun was our local; it stood on top of a little hill overlooking a wilderness of allotments and hen-runs. It was about half an hour’s walk from Oak Crescent; for some reason it was the only respectable pub in Dufton. The others weren’t exactly low, but even in their Best Rooms you were likely to see the overalled and sweaty. The landlord at the Siege Gun, a sour old ex-regular, discourage anyone entering the Best Room without a collar and tie.

But he’s been spoiled by his time in upmarket Warley: “It was too small, too dingy, too working-clas; four months in Warley had given me a fixed taste for either the roadhouse or the authentic country pub.”

Even Charles, who is planning to move to London, is fed-up of the Siege Gun:

Do you know, when I come into this pub, I don’t even have to order? They automatically issue a pint of wallop. And if I come in with someone else I point at them and nod twice if it’s bitter… Lovely, lovely ale… the mainstay of the industrial North, the bulwark of the British Constitution. If the Dufton pubs closed for just one day, there wouldn’t be a virgin or an unbroken window left by ten o’clock.

Graham Lees, one of the four founder members of CAMRA, apparently urged the use of the ‘ale’ in the name because it was a good, solid northern word, unlike the effete, southern ‘beer’.

The Pub at the Edge of the World

Dramatic Sky! (in St Kilda) by Gajtalbot From Flickr Creative Commons.

We’ve developed the bad habit of annotating films as we watch them, both of us with mobile devices in front of the TV reading different bits of Wikipedia. (“Huh, fancy that — Basil Rathbone was an intelligence agent in World War I and once disguised himself as a tree to get near to the enemy lines.”)

Last week, Film 4 showed Michael Powell’s first real feature film, The Edge of the World (1937), set on a fictional archipelago beyond the Outer Hebrides. That led us to look up St Kilda and the story of its evacuation in 1930. Of course what leapt out to us was the mention of ‘the Puff Inn’, which must be the most remote licensed premises in Britain.

The Puff Inn isn’t really called the Puff Inn. In fact, it’s not really a pub and that’s official. It’s a stormproof shed where the military personnel who are now the islands’ only residents can go to drink and eat. Someone ought to write a book about the influence of the British armed forces on beer culture. Where they go, beer goes, it seems.

Its decor hints at ‘pubbiness’, and there is beer, but tourists who’ve made the journey across the open sea to visit the National Trust-owned islands shouldn’t expect a ploughmans and a pint of mild.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the country, near us, there are several pubs on the far less remote and much balmier Isles of Scilly, the residents of which seem to relish their reputation as “2000 alcoholics clinging to a rock”.

The film was great, by the way, despite the typical 1930s all-purpose RADA Irish/Scottish/Welsh lilting accents.

Picture by Gajtalbot, via Flickr Creative Commons.

 

The Beer Bubble is Leaking

Bubbles

That urban beer bubble seems to be leaking somewhat. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen the following:

  • A spat between two breweries make national television news, newspapers and hugely popular non-specialist blogs, thanks to the Brewdog publicity machine and a compelling tale of skullduggery.
  • Marverine ‘Beer Beauty’ Cole on This Morning — a popular and very mainstream TV show — talking as seriously about beer as that format will allow. Much better than the One Show‘s attempt with Jay Rayner from last year which, although good, patronised beer as wine’s less versatile, uncouth cousin.
  • News that Brewdog are to have their own Channel 4 TV show. It will almost certainly be unbearable for most beer geeks to watch but may well grab the attention of many others. (Unlike the Neil Morrissey/Richard Fox show from a few years back, this will at least feature actual brewers, rather than celebs playing thereat.)
  • A beer from a small local brewer with a prominent ‘craft beer’ label on the pumpclip appearing between Sharp’s Doom Bar and Spingo Middle in one of our local pubs.
  • People we have dealings with in the real world beginning to talk about beer the same way they do about music, films or food: as something in which any person of discernment ought to take an interest. It’s odd to see someone you know only through work tweeting about their plans to go to Camden Brewery on Friday night for ‘some quality craft beers’.

Perhaps it is still a bubble and, yes, perhaps it remains predominantly urban, but if this outbreak continues, it might well pop at some point.

Pic by Thales from Flickr Creative Commons.

Updates, Notes and Responses

Oh, by the way — this post absolutely counts towards our 1000 by Wednesday, so there.

Beer: a flash in the pan?

On our recent trip to London, we found ourselves pondering the sustainability of the current craze for craft beer.

At the Southampton Arms, as befits our great age, we sat in the corner saying things like “What does he think his hair looks like?”; “Eee, she’ll catch her death in them trousers — they don’t reach her ankles!”; and “Is that lad wearing leggings and cowboy boots?” The crowd was young and fashionable and, for the most part, drinking cask ale from dimple mugs.

We have a suspicion that, in two years time, when beer has had its moment in the spotlight and, say, the eighties wine bar has made a retro comeback, or everyone’s drinking Sahti, or whatever, some of these people will deny ever having touched a pint of ale. Maybe they’ll secretly admit they didn’t like it at all and only did so to look cool.

Even if we are witnessing a mere trend, however, it will be impossible to put beer back in its box. After all, wine didn’t disappear from the collective consciousness when the Dagmar burned down. The heady euphoria of ten new breweries a week and can’t go on forever, but Britain’s beer landscape will have changed for good by the time the fad passes. A hidden demand for good beer will have been flushed out and many will have become (to some extent) beer geeks for life.

It’s hard to have a fling with beer: to know it is to love it.

Beer season on the BBC (if only)

Watching Beer Amongst the Belgians, the proof of concept pilot for a TV series hosted by one of our favourite beer writers, Tim Webb, it’s easy to imagine it fitting nicely into a season of programmes about beer on BBC Four.

Perhaps, in the same season, there might be room for Lew Bryson’s proposed American Beer Blogger series? Or something with Pete Brown?

We’d certainly love to see some compilations of of vintage beer advertising (see above, but there’s no shortage).

A while back, the BBC showed a documentary about an artisanal baker building up to a national competition, perfecting his recipe, sourcing ingredients and exploring new techniques in search of a competitive edge. Contrived drama, sure, but wouldn’t a similar show about a small brewery be interesting?

And, finally, the BFI has some great archive documentaries about British pubs — those would round out a season nicely.

How about it, Auntie?

Saturday Kitchen again

Back in 2009, we got on our high horse about the fact that the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen has a huge amount about matching wine with food but barely, if ever, mentions beer. We wrote and complained, but didn’t get a response.

Now Hardknott Brewing’s Dave Bailey is taking the fight to the Beeb.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if someone there finally listened and sorted this out?

London in the Raw

The British Film Institute is doing a great job of preserving documentaries, with multiple volumes of DVDs collecting COI, British Transport Film Unit and GPO shorts.

London in the Raw (1964) is released as part of their Flipside series and is a seedy exploitation film in the style of Mondo Cane. It’s interesting in itself, and features lots of footage of bars, pubs and clubs in the 1960s, including an extended sequence set in the Waterman’s Arms.

For those with an interest in beer and pubs, though, the real treat is the short documentary Pub (1962) which appears as a bonus on the disc. It’s only 16 minutes long and was filmed by a Londoner, Peter Davis, for Swedish television. It’s set in the Approach Tavern near Victoria Park in East London and shows a typical evening in the pub.

A couple of things stand out. First, it looks cold — people are dressed in hats, coats and heavy sweaters throughout. Were pubs unheated back then? Secondly, they drink a lot of bottled beer, and a fair bit of it is stout. Labels for Guinness, Courage Bristol Stout, Worthington White Shield and Meux Friary Ale are all visible at one point or another.