The ‘Great British’ pub awards with no category for drinking!

I SEE that finalists have been announced for the Great British Pub Awards. With respect to the Derbyshire pubs who are in the running, I can’t take these awards seriously.

They clearly rely too much on who’s putting up money for them, since there are categories for Stonegate, Greene King, Punch, Admiral Taverns and Hawthorn pub of the year but not for the other big pub companies, who presumably did not want to be on board.

They are a commercial enterprise more than an awards scheme, a bit like the pub guides you can spend your way into.

The biggest thing which annoys me, though, is that the industry sees no value in the principal product in a pub – beer. Or wine, or gin or any other drink, for that matter.

The awards have a long list of categories. Best pub garden, best pub for food, for families, dogs, best pub to watch sport, best pub with rooms, best for late night, best pub chef, best young pub chef, “community hero” pub.

Why would they not have a category for best pub for beer?

And while I’m on the subject of awards, it’s a curious decision by Marketing Derby to drop the “pub” category in the new Derby Food & Drink Awards.

Instead, there is a “Best for Drinking” category (at least, unlike the Great British Pub Awards, they still acknowledge drinking as a thing).

The trouble with the category is that it is a good deal more diverse than the number of different types of pubs there are. The three finalists are the Bless, Suds & Soda and the Blacksmith’s Lounge. I know the first two of those places to be excellent at what they do and have no reason to think the third is not excellent, too… but how do you compare a noisy, busy city centre pub with a bottle shop that has a bar, and with a cocktail bar?

Whoever gets the verdict on the night, more so than usual, they are all winners.

The awards night, by the way, is Monday, October 18, at The Chocolate Factory, the venue which is cheerfully mopping up much of the business Derby College strangely decided it no longer wanted in the Round House.