Categories
beer in fiction / tv

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?

Categories
beer in fiction / tv london pubs

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.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv

Shameless Fictional Beer

The brilliant Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has an area put aside for displays about specific communities in the city. When we visited (this weekend — we’ve just got back) it was Wythenshawe’s turn. Because the Channel 4 show Shameless is filmed there, they had a display of costumes and props from the show, including some brilliant fake beer cans.

Anyone fancy a Stelberg Louis or an Ashbury Export?

We’ve written about fictional beer before and we’re not the only ones who are fascinated by this kind of thing.

Lots more on Manchester to follow in the next day or two.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv Germany

Plenty beer, plenty meat, plenty money

On our recent jaunt in the north of Germany, we took the opportunity to re-read Erskine Childers 1903 German-invasion-scare novel, The Riddle of the Sands.

This passage occurs when Davies and Carruthers (yes, the narrator is called Carruthers!) meet a channel pilot on the Friesian coast and he takes them duck hunting.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘all right. There is plenty ducks, but first we will drink a glass beer; then we will shift your ship, captain–she lies not good there.’ (Davies started up in a panic, but was waved back to his beer.) ‘Then we will drink together another glass beer; then we will talk of ducks–no, then we will kill ducks–that is better. Then we will have plenty glasses beer.’

This was an unexpected climax, and promised well for our prospects. And the programme was fully carried out. After the beer our host was packed briskly by his daughter into an armour of woollen gaiters, coats, and mufflers, topped with a worsted helmet, which left nothing of his face visible but a pair of twinkling eyes. Thus equipped, he led the way out of doors, and roared for Hans and his gun, till a great gawky youth, with high cheek-bones and a downy beard, came out from the yard and sheepishly shook our hands.

Together we repaired to the quay, where the pilot stood, looking like a genial ball of worsted, and bawled hoarse directions while we shifted the Dulcibella to a berth on the farther shore close to the other vessels. We returned with our guns, and the interval for refreshments followed. It was just dusk when we sallied out again, crossed a stretch of bog-land, and took up strategic posts round a stagnant pond. Hans had been sent to drive, and the result was a fine mallard and three ducks. It was true that all fell to the pilot’s gun, perhaps owing to Hans’ filial instinct and his parent’s canny egotism in choosing his own lair, or perhaps it was chance; but the shooting-party was none the less a triumphal success. It was celebrated with beer and music as before, while the pilot, an infant on each podgy knee, discoursed exuberantly on the glories of his country and the Elysian content of his life. ‘There is plenty beer, plenty meat, plenty money, plenty ducks,’ summed up his survey.

Image from the cover of the recent beautifully designed Penguin edition.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv pubs

P.G. Wodehouse on the pub trade

Having bought his tobacco and observed the life and thought of the town for half an hour… he made his way to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns which the citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to support. In most English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers blaming the Government.

From Something Fresh (1915)