Michael Hardman: “It is seen by many people as a trendy organisation. The archetypal CAMRA member is a 20-year-old, male, with long hair, wire-rimmed glasses, drinking half pints of strong beer… I would prefer the archetypal member to be a steel worker in Scunthorpe, downing a gallon of the stuff after the shift has finished.”
One of the founding members of the Campaign for Real Ale, interviewed in What’s Brewing, March 1977.
9 replies on “CAMRA stereotypes, 1977”
Now the archetypal CAMRA member is a 56-year-old male, with long but thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, drinking half pints of unusual beer 😉
So the same guy from 1977 then ?
Well, it is worth pondering the ages of CAMRA chairmen over the years: they were all in their twenties or thirties for the first decade or so.
1977 : Comedy beards and chunky jumpers fighting keg
2013 : Comedy beards and ironic t-shirts drinking keg
The beard stereotype hadn’t quite taken hold by 1977.
Yes but it’s not the same keg!
Gary
So….CAMRA members from 1977 are the original craft hipsters?
40-something, beard, paunch, heavy metal or Hobgoblin t-shirt. Mind you, last beer festival I went to I was genuinely surprised at how few blokes fitting that profile I saw. Perhaps the clue’s in the demographics – they’ve all put on another 10 years, lost a few pounds and put the t-shirts away.
That said, this whole discussion has been moot since the big membership push – the archetypal CAMRA member these days is the guy who signs up for the Spoons tokens and forgets to cancel. Hardman was describing the (first-generation) Real Ale Tw*t, and his place in the ecosystem of caricatured subcultures has surely been taken by the Craft Beer P*nce.
Beer geeks is beer geeks.