Last Orders At The Bar Please? Saving Britain's Pubs With Tom Kerridge.

"Pub! It's where you go to drink. Pub! It's where you go think" - Pub, Six Blokes.

When BBC2 commissioned, and Tom Kerridge embarked upon, his four part series Saving Britain's Pubs With Tom Kerridge towards the end of 2019 neither the station, the man, or us the viewers could have had any idea just how dramatic the events of 2020 would turn out to be. By the time it aired a year later Covid-19 had wreaked havoc on the world, current global death toll - 1,452,608, current UK death toll - 58,030, we'd undergone a near three month national lockdown and we were just about emerging out of a second, slightly less strict and much less successful, lockdown into a tier system that nobody expects to do anything more than dent the escalating daily mortality rate.

People have been missing a lot of things. Primarily family and friends but also holidays, art galleries, restaurants, and perhaps more than those three, pubs. Some are still open for takeaway drinks but what we're missing is getting together in those pubs to see our friends, to drink, to eat, to listen to music, to join quiz nights, to laugh, and to feel alive.

I certainly am. But then I'm a fan of pubs and most of my friends are too. Many people are but with the advent of the Internet and working from home, even before the pandemic, cheap supermarket booze, and a general awareness of health concerns among younger generations pubs having been having a tough time of of it for the last couple of decades. 

Since the turn of the millennium, the UK has lost over fourteen thousand pubs, a quarter of its total. Michelin-starred chef, Saturday Kitchen guest, and owner of a proud Salisbury burr Tom Kerridge's aim, in this series, is to do his best to save four more pubs from joining them. The White Hart in Chilsworthy, Cornwall, The Prince Albert in Stroud, Gloucestershire, The Black Bull in Gartmore, between Stirling and Loch Lomond, and The Golden Anchor, in Nunhead, South East London - my manor.

Each of these pubs is very different but each of them has a very specific charm and it's a charm that's made more so by their loving owners and managers. In Chilsworthy, a non-coastal Cornish village between Bude and Okehampton, Amy is passionate, knowledgeable, hard-working, and very stressed. Her pub, The White Hart, "the only pub in the village", is something of a community resort that hosts potato contests, morris dances, and card games but with its commanding views across the beautiful green valleys of Cornwall it really could, and should, be attracting tourists, and their money, too.

Amy and her husband Ian (who also works as a gas engineer) only take £75 per week in wages for themselves which is not really a sustainable way of living so Kerridge (himself a landlord of three pubs in and around Marlow, Buckinghamshire - ventures he doesn't miss an opportunity to use the national broadcaster for to get free advertising) tasks himself with ways of making sure the pub starts running at a more handsome profit while not losing the essential character of the place.

It's a trick he aims to repeat in Nunhead, Gartmore, and Stroud. The White Hart serves good food but the restaurant area lacks character and Kerridge eats his meal alone while locals fill the nearby bar. You get the sense Kerridge is desperate not to be seen as a gentrifier, or a commodifier, of pubs and I don't think he is but his mind, his non-drinking mind - he's quit the booze, is so business focused he can't help but occasionally come across that way.

It's a delicate balance for sure. While The White Hart undergoes refurbishment ready for a St Piran's Day reopening at the start of March, Kerridge turns his attention to The Prince Albert in Strood. Owned by a 'pubco' (a pub company, think Wetherspoons, Hobgoblin, Greene King, Pitcher & Piano) but with a much better vibe than you'd associate with those 'tied houses'.

Overseen by the affable Lottie and Miles, The Royal Albert sits just outside of town (but with no car park) and it's big on live music. Regular folk gigs take place in front of adoring beardy and boozy fans. Lottie and Miles cook for the bands, provide them with free drinks, and even give them a cut of the 'wet sales' from the bar.

The one thing they don't do is take very much for themselves. Even when the regular mobile pizza chef is invited to ply his trade from the pub he doesn't have to pay for his pitch. The Royal Albert has a great atmosphere, it's a pub I know I'd feel at home in, but it's struggling financially. As is The Golden Anchor in Nunhead. Landlady Lana is so lovely I've made a pledge to myself to visit when I can. Kerridge announces, to my glee, that SE15 is now "a cool postcode to have" (I'm SE23 but a five minute walk takes me into SE15) but The Golden Anchor, to be fair, isn't the coolest pub in the postcode.

There's The Rye, The Prince of Peckham, and John the Unicorn in Peckham itself and even Nunhead has Ye Olde Nun's Head, The Man of Kent, and The Pyrotechnist's Arms to tempt you in before you find yourself at The Golden Anchor. A pub that acts as something of a community hub for the local West Indian population. The front bar echoes to the sound of pool balls and dominoes while locals nurse a bottle of beer or even a glass of water for hours. The back room hosts a dancehall that fills with DJs dropping reggae tunes (multiple rewinds) but only opens for four hours each week.

As with the other pubs, it won't be enough to save it forever. Lana talks of how she's got rid of the 'yardies' and 'gangsters' that made the pub an uncomfortable place to visit for other locals and Kerridge chats to Marcia in the kitchen who's cooking up a chicken soup before he ventures off into Brixton to learn about the history of West Indian run pubs in London at The Market House in Coldharbour Lane. Formerly The Coach and Horses which, in 1965, became the first British pub to have a Jamaican immigrant, George Berry, as a landlord.

Back in Peckham, he takes Lana into The Prince of Peckham to see how a black run British pub can thrive in modern London. With innovation, enthusiasm, good food, a good range of drinks, and a welcoming atmosphere. It's not exactly rocket science but it is dependent, and needs finessing, for the customers the pub hopes to attract.

What works in Peckham is not necessarily what's needed for a pub in a small village in the Trossachs. The Black Bull is entirely owned and run by its locals. It's both pub - and hub. They operate a minibus to drop refreshed patrons back home and Gartmore's only shop is part of the pub. Kerridge is so impressed he buys shares to become a 'Bull believer'.

After a brief detour into the world of tithed landlords, MROs (market rent only pubs), and how pubcos will fight tooth and nail to protect shareholders and creditors rather than protect landlords, managers, or pubs ("that's their model") we start to, finally, see the benefit of some of the enthusiasm, knowledge, and, in the case of The Black Bull, investment that Kerridge has put into these four pubs.

The White Hart is host to glorious and packed St Piran's celebrations as locals and visitors drink, eat, party, and "shout" on the 5th March this year but only a few days later a new visitor arrives on the British pub scene and Covid-19 isn't looking to buy drinks, watch bands, or eat pizza.

As the news greets our various managers, landlords, and landladies there are tears, there is existential angst, and there are, very soon, some very very empty pubs. As you'll recall Boris Johnson's initial approach was to tell people not to visits pubs and/or restaurants but to leave them open and this, of course, meant that different pubs and different pub owners took different approaches to the news.

With no government advice you can't blame them for not being sure if they should stay open or close their doors and when the government, lethally late, finally announced a full lockdown it was almost something of a relief. If not as big a relief as the one that arrived on 4th July this year when pubs, or at least some of them, reopened.

Cautiously, and with new safety measures, of course, The Prince Albert, The White Hart, and The Golden Anchor welcomed locals and guests again and, eleven days later - Scottish legislation being devolved on this matter, The Black Bull followed. 

People were happy. Not just pubgoers but those who own or run the pubs. Lana, particularly, was overjoyed. Lockdown, and the interventon of Tom Kerridge in her business, has given her a chance to reset, to rethink her priorities, and, most happily of all, rediscover herself. She claims she's fallen in love with not just her pub again but also with her life.

So happy was she, it was impossible not to beam with her but, as we all know, there's a very worrying coda to this series. After filming stopped Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations, and deaths all began to spike again. So worryingly that the government, late again - shamefully, ordered a second lockdown that was much less strict on schools, universities, and work places but remained draconian with regards to pubs and the hospitality sector.

As I write we're coming out of that second lockdown into a tiered system of restrictions which won't help either the pub business recover or the Covid-19 death toll fall as much as we'd all hope. December begins tomorrow, a hugely important month, for the pub business but, also, a hugely important month for stopping the likely festive spread of coronavirus.

Despite imminent vaccines, we're nowhere near out of the woods with Covid yet and pubs are just one factor of that. A lot of pubs won't survive these next few months but, more importantly, a lot of people won't survive these next few months. A sense of perspective is important at all times but one day I hope we can raise a glass together in a pub again. In the before times, when the last orders bell rang out, you'd often hear an overworked bartender's voice ring out "ain't you lot got homes to go". This year those homes are the places we've been spending almost all our of time. It'd be a shame if in the future we ain't got pubs to go.