Let’s sing praises of the Scottish pub before they ring last orders
As changes in society show bars falling in popularity, The Thinking Drinkers are bringing their ‘Save Our Scottish Pubs’ campaign to the Edinburgh Fringe
Drink up, because the pub is dying. It’s very likely that your local is on a life-support machine. These iconic elbow-bending institutions, that have been the cornerstone of our culture for centuries, are closing down at an acutely alarming rate.
Every day, three pubs are closing for good in the UK while in Scotland, a pub is closing every week. The source of these sobering statistics is a cocktail of several different factors including soaring business rates (which are making it tough for all high street traders), VAT, drink discounts in supermarkets and tax on beer, the bedrock of the British boozer, which is higher than almost anywhere else in Europe.
Another element of the perfect storm in which the pub finds itself is the fact that we’re not going out as much as we used to, instead immersing ourselves at home in our own cosy sound and vision aquariums, feeding on Netflix, Amazon Prime and box sets.
Social media isn’t helping either. Not only has a swift half with mates been substituted by socialising through little screens, but Instagram and the like has also made people more body conscious than generations before them and, therefore, less open to experience the huge joy that is a packet of pork scratchings (carb free) and a pint of beer (contains fewer calories than a pint of orange juice or milk).
Recent research has revealed that one in four 18 to 24-yearolds doesn’t drink and, when they’re not shouting through digital windows at each other, they’re more likely to congregate in a sterile coffee shop than in the cosy corner of a pub.
If we don’t do something about this then, according to some sums we scribbled down on a beer mat, there will be no more pubs by the year 2075. That may seem a long way away if you’re in a coffee shop but if you’re in a pub, where time flies by, the last orders bell will be ringing before you know it. It’s a big worry, no doubt.
But fear not, because we are on a mission to save the beleaguered British pub. In our latest show, Thinking Drinkers: Pub Crawl, we explore all the ingredients and elements that make the pub such a wonderful place to be. This bar-hop through history proves that without the pub, society as we know it would crumble. Peered through the prism of a pint glass, we argue that the western world is built on boozy bars from the oldest building in the world (which was a pub) to Ancient Greek symposiums, Victorian gin palaces, Wild West saloons, taverns, inns, beach bars and Irish boozers.
Pubs, in whatever form, have been cradles of creativity for centuries. Plato, Socrates and other Greek clever-clogs flexed their cerebral muscles with every pour of the wine jug; some of Britain’s greatest literary minds sought inspiration in the pub; William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer and Samuel Johnson all regularly propped up the bar, soaking up the speech and the characters that surrounded them, before decanting them into dictionaries, plays, poems and novels.
In Edinburgh, alone, there are dozens of locals that can rightly claim to have inspired some of Scotland’s finest literary minds. Perhaps the most famous is the “Poet’s Pub”, otherwise known as Milnes Bar in the New Town. In the 1950s and 60s, Milnes was a simmering pot of ideas fuelling the leading literary lights of the Scottish Renaissance such as Hugh Macdiarmid, Sorley Maclean, Edwin Morgan and Robert Garioch.
Another Scottish Renaissance favourite was Sandy Bell’s, while across the George IV Bridge will bring you to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern, more than 200 years old and named after an eponymous character who led a double life as an upstanding pillar of Edinburgh society by day, and a leader of a gang of robbers by night. Brodie’s split personality inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
For more contemporary literary locals in Edinburgh, head to The Oxford Bar on Young Street, a legendary literary drinking spot and the favourite watering hole of Ian Rankin’s fictional cop, Inspector Rebus.
To outsiders, it may at first seem a little too “local” but it’s superb once you settle in. There’s no music, no fruit machine and no frills – just a scattering of tables and chairs and a mingling of drinkers at the bar with a pint and, more often than not, a story to tell.
Down in Leith, the fictitious Port Sunshine in Irvine Welsh’s iconic novel Trainspotting
was based on The Port o’ Leith pub, one of Welsh’s regular haunts. The Volunteer Arms (also known as “The Volley”) features in the novel too while Wilkies Bar, another Leith local, features in the film version of Filth.
And, of course, the White Hart down on Grassmarket was one of many Edinburgh taverns frequented by Rabbie Burns, the ultimate 18th century blue-collar bard who was bawdier than Shakespeare with more wit than the watered-down Wordsworth. He was measured in his measures, contained in his cups and seldom unruly or rowdy, instead embracing all the advantageous aspects of intoxication – especially the imaginative freedom it gave to his sharp-shooting wordy gun – its crosshairs pointed firmly at the temples of the hypocritical Church, the State, class inequality and pretty much anything that undermined the pride and the value of the common man.
And then, of course, there’s alcohol. In fact, alcohol has been helping the Scottish be more social for centuries. While it can cause all manner of misery when mistreated, it is an essential element of the pub experience and it’s the reason why, in every pub and bar we “visit” during our show, each audience member receives a delicious and discerning drink; we’ve purposely cherry-picked some amazing drinks to help tell our story: Lagunitas 12th of Never Pale Ale from California, Ketel One vodka from Holland, Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin from Australia, Jameson Irish Whiskey and Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva Rum from Venezuela.
As anyone who has had a couple of pints in a pub will testify, drink rounds off the jagged edges of unease and liberally applies a unique afterglow to everything around you. As one glass blends into another, it sharpens your subconscious, it coaxes out courage, confidence and creativity; it awakens your imagination and lights a fire under the rocking chair of unadventurous ideas.
Statistics show that one in four of us fell in love in the pub – how many people fell in love in a Starbucks or by swiping right on Tinder? While some coffee chains strive to sidestep the taxman, the average tax bill of a UK pub is £140,000 and £1 in £3 spent in pubs goes to the taxman – which means every time you don’t go to the pub, it’s hospitals, schools and libraries that’ll suffer.
So, go to the pub and do your bit to save it. And then come and see our show where we’ll celebrate the pub and give you five free drinks. But remember our message, our motto, our mantra; “Drink Less, Drink Better”. Preferably in a pub.
“Alcohol has been helping the Scottish be more social for centuries”