Publican who never pulled a pint retires

July 1995

Seventy years behind a bar, yet he never pulled a pint... that’s Mike Meyler of Tacumshane, who at 86 years young, is bowing out after a lifetime in the business.

‘The only draught I have in here is the one behind the counter in winter time,’ said Mike, who never took a drink himself despite serving up bottled beers and half ones since he was 15 years old.

‘I wouldn’t let it (draught beer) into the place. I’ll tell you the reason. You’d get three people walking in here, asking for a pint. You’d give them three pints out of the same barrel, and they’d have three different opinions on whether it was good or bad.’

Mike formally handed over the old-style pub and shop to his son Gerry at a party on the premises on Sunday night, which was marked by ‘plenty of noise’ until the early hours of the morning.

It is a legacy the retiring owner is proud to pass on. ‘It’s one of the finest pubs in the county,’ he said. It was formerly owned by his uncle-in-law Garry Murphy, who left it to him on his death in 1957.

‘He left me the whole place,’ said Mike, who started working there as a teenager on July 9, 1929. ‘I didn’t have one father. I had two. Garry was a thorough gentleman.’

As a young man of 15, Mike proved his enthusiasm for the job when he sold a record number of drinks at the Killinick Harriers point-to-point in Knockhowlin.

He served six cases of baby Powers (128 in each case) and 350 dozen bottles of stout, all in just three and a half hours.

Despite being surrounded by alcohol, he was never tempted to take a drop himself. ‘I was reared in a family that didn’t drink,’ he said. He used to smoke cigarettes but went into town one day fourteen years ago ‘to buy £100 of W.P. to make me stop – that’s Will Power’.

He was 86 last December but hasn’t an ache or a pain. ‘I don’t know what pain is. I was telling the boys here, I’m going to Australia to play three games of rugby with the Wallabies,’ he joked.

He doesn’t intend to retire completely to the back room, but will instead be in and out of the shop and pub, helping Gerry and his wife Teresa, who recently painted the premises in traditional shades of red and green.

But you’ll still never see him pulling a pint!