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Beer history beer in fiction / tv

The Only Draught Around Here Now

The Tan Hill Inn was included in the gallery of ‘Old Inns’ we posted the other day and, by coincidence, cropped up in an angry letter in a 1985 edition of CAMRA’s What’s Brewing to which we happened to be referring yesterday.

See the video above? That’s the Tan Hill Inn. See the lanky landlord serving behind the bar? That’s the then editor of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, Neil Hanson, who ran the pub.

Members of the Sheffield Branch were furious that he allowed it to be used in an advert without seizing the opportunity to promote ‘real ale’:

Surely, regardless of how short notice he was given for the filming, he could have acquired at least one handpump or even a CAMRA mirror instead of giving major advertising to John Smith’s (“the only draught round here now”).

Hanson’s response was shirty. For starters, he was a freelancer, and, secondly…

The keg pumps are shown in background shot for a couple of seconds. If Everest had felt that they would be noticed by anyone other hyper-sensitive CAMRA members playing with the freeze-frames of their videos, they would have lost them altogether.

Tee hee! It’s time to admit it: we find niche interest groups bickering among themselves highly entertaining.

4 replies on “The Only Draught Around Here Now”

oh its hilarious, you want to go along to a few beard club meetings, get a pint of Carling & join the fun. It’s dead easy to win them up.

He seems to have been very unpopular with members for some reason — there was a motion to have him sacked at the (top of head) 1986 AGM. Main gripe seems to have been that he kept cutting down florid descriptions of pubs sent in by branches to six words.

From previous experience of selection meetings about 10 years ago I think whoever is editing the GBG gets criticised, whether it’s florid descriptions or the amount of pubs the branch is allowed to put in.

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