Meet the real-life Jack and Victor, bus pass bon vivants
They’ve written books on their riotous tours of Scotland in search of perfect pubs (no food, no carpets and no children) ... and all with their wives’ blessings
JOHN Mackay is running through his list of things that ruin a good pub. ‘Well, food for starters,’ he says. ‘Food has no place in a pub. Maybe a pie, but there shouldn’t be a full menu. Then there’s children. There shouldn’t be children sitting about. And carpets. Definitely no carpets.’ Thankfully, there are no carpets in the East Kilbride hostelry where Mackay and his pal Craig Stevenson are currently holding court. Indeed, there’s nothing more substantial than a packet of Scampi Fries available behind the bar and, by the looks of the grizzled barflies quietly sipping their afternoon pints, no one under the age of 55. According to this pair, it’s practically five-star.
Mackay and Stevenson are Scotland’s least likely pub critics. After retirement and a few rounds of golf, the pensioners realised they had ‘no hobbies whatsoever’ and hatched a plan to traverse the country on their bus passes in search of a decent pint.
What started out as the odd day trip has evolved into a highly improbable, alcohol-fuelled odyssey to more than 700 pubs across Scotland that has produced seven self-published books. They have encountered bank robbers in Dunfermline, danced on tables in Ayrshire and even drunk a swift pint in a pub that proudly declared ‘No Guns’ outside.
Given the pair generally have two or three pints in each pub they visit, that works out at…
‘We drink too much,’ explains Mackay happily.
If you’re imagining a well-heeled Jack and Victor from Still Game, you’re on the right track. At 69, Mackay is the elder, more sprightly of the two (Stevenson, 63, suffers terribly with arthritis) with a charming twinkle in his eye.
Stevenson has built his very own Clansman at the bottom of his garden for those days when he can’t face the Citylink – a fully functioning pub complete with optics, beer on draght and a little neon sign saying: ‘Bar Open’. It is called the Stoat Inn.
Both are partial to what they call ‘a wee touch of the scenic grandeur’ on their trips around Scotland, although only up to a point.
‘You look around and it’s a lovely view – and it’s still a lovely view a minute later,’ says Mackay. ‘So why not go for a pint?’
Why not indeed? Being gentlemen of a certain age, the books are chock full of the sort of observations sadly lacking in the Michelin Guide. One bus journey on the A82 over the Rest and be Thankful in Argyll is reviewed thus: ‘It is a beautiful run through wonderful countryside that cannot be beaten anywhere, and there was a toilet on the bus.’
The two maintain the wheeze started partly as a means to ‘get away from the wives’ – although Irene and Kate, Stevenson and Mackay’s other halves, quietly inform me they call their time apart ‘bliss days’ and dread the state in which the pair will return.
Their very first jaunt, to Inveraray via Tarbet and Arrochar and related in their first book The Cheap Way Round (dedicated to ‘the two luckiest girls in the world’) was not a success. They were horrified upon arriving at their first pub, the Tarbet Hotel, only to be informed the bar was closed. Would they like a cup of tea instead?
‘This is quarter past 11, for Christ’s sake,’ said Mackay. ‘Who drinks tea at that, or any, time on a guy’s day out?’
In pursuit of a stronger libation at 11.15am, the pair walked to Arrochar rather than wait for the next bus. ‘We felt like real hikers walking the two miles to Arrochar,’ writes Mackay. ‘We looked like a couple of bevvy merchants.’
Over the seven books the pair have refined their tactics, studying bus timetables in forensic detail and searching out pubs that will not only be open but have, as they put it, ‘a bit of atmosphere’.
‘Old man’s pubs are what we like,’ says Mackay. ‘There was one place in Inverness, you walk in and it’s a dump. But it’s a nice dump. The girls behind the bar were lovely. The people behind the bar are the most important thing.’
‘If you walk in the door and whoever is behind the bar says hello, then you’re half way there,’ says Stevenson. ‘That’s the first of the five stars.’
It’s a rating system unlikely to be taken up by the AA Guide. ‘Some of the worst bars we’ve been to are light and airy and full of white pine,’ insists Stevenson.
‘But you’re treated like a number. It’s not that people are rude, it’s that you get no treatment at all. You might as well be a machine. That, to me, is a bad pub. I don’t care really how manky places are as long as the beer is good, the glass you’re drinking out of is clean and the people are friendly.’
The pair fondly recall a trip to the Laurieston in Glasgow, where the barman was so keen to finish telling them a story he came out from behind the bar and sat with them to deliver the punchline.
Not everywhere is quite so welcoming, however, and the pair have encountered their fair share of pubs that would make the Star Wars bar look like an All Bar One.
ONE of their worst ever experiences was at the Star Hotel in Port Glasgow, which Mackay describes as ‘the scariest place on Earth’. There was a sign outside saying “No Guns” and inside there were holes in the floor and walls.
‘I looked in the window and I thought I was looking into an old store room where they’d put all their broken furniture,’ says Stevenson. ‘That was the bar.’ The pair were so terrified they went for a hand-steadier in another pub up the road before going in.
Then there was the bank robber they met in Raffles Sports Bar in Dunfermline (no relation, we must assume, to Raffles in Singapore) who was, says Mackay, ‘the nicest bank robber you ever met’.
‘We got talking about Peterhead, as we’d been visiting there,’ says Stevenson. ‘And he said, “I’ve been in Peterhead too. I spent 13 years there”. But he was a nice guy. I hope he’s still a nice guy.’
In Lower Largo, they asked two old boys at the bar what they did in winter – and were astonished by the response: ‘Strip dominos.’
The buses, too, provide their fair share of entertainment. As Stevenson relates in The Cheap Way Round: ‘You meet a different class of traveller on the bus. The passengers tend to be less annoying and predominantly older. We have had to become quite ruthless when it comes to using the bus.
‘Far too many of the blue rinse brigade have taken up the option of free travel. That means there is no chivalry any more. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game nowadays. One moment of weakness and you could be trapped behind an old biddy wrestling with her Zimmer.’
Given their somewhat niche
market, the books have done astonishingly well, with the first selling 2,000 copies and the later ones – which include a book on pubs near football grounds and a baffling tome involving metal detecting on beaches near pubs – selling 1,000 each. The pair cart them to Waterstones themselves, and were delighted to be informed that for a few short days in the East Kilbride branch the only book outselling them was 50 Shades of Grey.
Time for the movie? ‘Only if we can get the right people to play us,’ says Mackay. ‘George and Brad are getting on a wee bit now. Too many wrinkles.’
Hollywood may not be on the phone to East Kilbride just yet, but their reviews are held in such high regard they are now having a real impact on the places they’ve been.
‘We improved a pub toilet once,’ say Mackay. ‘There was one in a pub in Lochgelly that was literally the worst place on Earth. After we wrote about it, we got an email from the owner saying we have since renovated and you’re more than welcome to visit. We haven’t been back yet.’
The pair confess food rarely plays a part in their trips and sneer at the mere mention of a ‘gastropub’.
INSTEAD, they take sandwiches for the bus – and their contents make the books. ‘I had corned beef with English mustard on plain bread,’ Mackay writes in one. ‘Craig had something else.’
‘I don’t think we’ve ever eaten a meal in a pub,’ says Mackay. ‘We’re sort of anti-food. And frankly, some of the pubs we’ve been in, you wouldn’t want to eat anything they were serving up. We were in one bar and a guy asked for a beer with a piece of lime in it and the barman told him, “The fruit shop’s next door”. That’s the way we look at it.’
There is one trend they are particularly alarmed about. ‘We find great wee pubs in every town, we go out of our way to look for them, but a lot of them are closing now,’ says Mackay. ‘It’s a terrible situation. A Wetherspoons opens and the drinks are a pound cheaper and so the old bars lose business. Every time a Wetherspoons opens in a town, two other pubs shut down.’
They cite one pub in Perth in which they’d had a particularly enjoyable afternoon, only to return a few months later to discover it was closed.
‘Some pubs are going to amazing lengths to survive,’ says Mackay. ‘There’s one pub in Perth, the Ship Inn, where a quarter of the bar is now a gin bar and they run gin nights. That’s what the manager feels she’s got to do to survive now – and a lot of pubs all across Scotland are similar to that.’
Stevenson says he drinks ‘nothing but’ Tennents lager; but while Mackay prefers a pint of Best, he will occasionally branch out. ‘If I’m going on a diet, then it’s vodka and soda,’ he says. ‘And I love wine.’ Stevenson eyes him, aghast. Not that they are allowed to get too soused. ‘Both our wives worry sick,’ confesses Mackay. ‘My wife’s always telling me to eat something.’
Their latest book, out next year, will focus on their favourite 50 pubs. Like the rest, it’s unlikely to make any money. Not that they seem bothered. Clearly, what underpins it all is a solid friendship forged over thousands of pints in hundreds of pubs.
‘We don’t take ourselves seriously enough to fall out if someone’s read the timetable wrong,’ says Mackay. ‘We enjoy the trips. That’s the only reason. It’s fun and gives us something to do.’
As they get another pint in, I ask one final question. Just what is it they have against carpets?
Oh, for God’s sake,’ exclaims Mackay. ‘If you have to ask, I can’t tell you.’