Arise, Sir Tim of Spoons!

The joy of Wetherspoons

With the news that Tim Martin from Wetherspoon has been knighted I thought I’d post something I wrote a few years back for the Spectator. For those who don’t know Martin, Ed Cummings’ portrait in the Daily Telegraph made me laugh:

In an era of slick, identikit business leaders and boyish tech villains, the Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin cuts a figure out of time. With his mane of white hair, polo shirts and craggy demeanour, he sits in a tradition of male British celebrities – James May, James Martin, Jamie Oliver – who look like they would be happier playing in a covers band.

And if you’re unfamiliar with Wetherspoon’s pubs, I highly recommend reading this thing from Unherd by American writer Chris Arnade:

Until I walked across England, from Liverpool to Hull, I’d never heard of Wetherspoon. I certainly had no idea that, as a well-educated person, I was supposed to be scornful of the chain of pubs. When I discovered it, I liked it, for the same simple reasons that everyone I met in a Wetherspoon liked it: they are almost always open; have absurdly inexpensive, great beer; and are inviting spaces filled with interesting people who like to talk.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote back in 2017:

Of all the stories I’ve heard about the fallout from Brexit, families divided, work jeopardised, friendships ended, the saddest was someone on Facebook who announced that he would never visit  a Wetherspoons because its proprietor, Tim Martin, was involved with the Leave campaign. This seemed to me the very definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face, imagine turning down cheap beer because of the European Union. But it also disrupts one of the fundamentals of a liberal society, that you do business even with those whom you strongly disagree. Voltaire marveled at this concept on his visit to the London Stock Exchange: “Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt.”

But it’s not just over Brexit, it’s long been fashionable to sneer at Wetherspoons. Perhaps it’s because they sell such cheap beer. In London a pint in Wetherspoons will cost you less than two thirds of what you’ll pay in the place with gastro pretensions up the hill. They can offer these prices because they have massive buying power. There are now 1,000 Wetherspoons around the country. It’s a far cry from when Tim Martin bought his first pub in 1979 and named the company after one of his old teachers who couldn’t control the class, which was how Martin felt about trying to run a pub. 

It has to be said, those cheap prices do mean that you get some, ahem, colourful characters in a Spoons. The one in Liverpool Street station is particularly intimidating, full of big loud men with shaven heads having a few before getting the train back to Billericay. The pubs are often in converted cinemas, banks and churches and can be rather cavernous. You’re not going to get the quiet burble of conversation, the crackle of an open fire and a shepherd’s pie prepared by the landlord’s wife.

So by the standards of that mythical pub we all have in our minds, Wetherspoons falls short. But then so do 99% of pubs. Most are owned by  chains. One of the biggest, Mitchell and Butler, also own Nicholson’s, Harvester and All Bar One. Many pubs that look independent aren’t: our local in Blackheath, the Hare & Billet, is owned by the Metropolitan Pub Company. Being part of a chain doesn’t stop your average Wetherspoons being something of a beer drinker's paradise. Whereas until recently many pubs considered doing real ale something of chore, Wetherspoons have always prided themselves on their selection. And because they don’t play music or show sport you can enjoy your pint in peace. The food, particularly the curries and the meats pies, isn’t bad either. In a strange town a Spoons can be a refuge. 

As with all chains, there are good Spoons and bad¹. The best have a sense of community lacking in their more upmarket neighbours where the old regulars have been priced out.  I experienced the full magic recently at the Brockley Barge in south east London when we popped in one night after a meal. The beer, of course, was good and remarkably cheap but even better was the atmosphere. There were postmen enjoying a post-work drink, students, old men eking out their pensions and chubby girls on a night out drinking pinot grigio by the bucketload. People were smiling and talking to each other. Maybe I’d had too much discount real ale but that night I felt like Voltaire at the London Stock Exchange. However you voted in the Referendum can we at least agree that being able to buy a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord for £2.50 is a wonderful thing?

1. I overheard a couple talking in the Leading Light in Faversham where I sometimes work and they were complaining that it’s the worst Wetherspoons in the country. At the time the heating and the coffee machine were broken.