I could just murder a pint! Rankin’s regret at not buying a pub
CRIME writer Ian Rankin is so distressed that he cannot get a pint during lockdown that he is thinking of buying a pub.
The author – just like the famous detective in his Rebus novels – is known to drink at the Oxford Bar in Edinburgh’s New Town.
But Covid-19 has left the writer confined to his house in the city.
So to celebrate his 60th birthday, he even took a can and glass and had a drink outside his favourite haunt.
Now he is kicking himself that he has never got round to fulfilling his lifelong ambition of owning a pub.
Mr Rankin said: ‘I could murder a pint right now. I can’t believe that I still haven’t bought my own pub and of course am now really regretting not having done so. I am missing it.’
Speaking to Lockdown Litfest’s Paul Blezard’s podcast, he added: ‘Am I being serious? It would be a damn good idea especially at a time like this.’
Rankin said he first walked into the Oxford Bar while writing his first Inspector Rebus novel Knots and Crosses.
‘I was introduced to the Oxford by a student friend of mine,’ he said. ‘He was a part-time barman and I was just at the start of writing the first Rebus novel.
‘I looked at it and thought this is where my guy would drink.
‘It’s no bells, no whistles, central Edinurgh, hidden away, there’s no music, no juke box, the TV is hardly ever on.
‘It was all about conversation, a nice safe place to have a chat.
‘And so that’s where Rebus drinks and I have been drinking there since about 1984 or ‘85 I guess. I had my stag party in there in July ‘86.
‘I had my last drink in there the day before the lockdown. I am hoping that when this is all over the Oxford Bar will still be there for me to walk back into, and for Rebus to walk back into.’