Tuesday 2 January 2024

Me and my Spoons

I've written about Sir Tim Martin and Wetherspoons for the Spectator...
 

Spoons-haters would like to believe that his pubs are grubby, anonymous, identikit dives selling bad beer to alcoholics. None of this could be further from the truth (apart from the bit about alcoholics, but why shouldn’t they have somewhere nice to go?). Every Wetherspoons is unique and many of them have breathed new life into great buildings that would otherwise have been demolished or turned into flats. No two Wetherspoons carpets are alike and their toilets are second-to-none (the company is a multiple winner of the prestigious Loo of the Year Awards). They have a superb app and a magazine (Wetherspoon News) that has a readership of two million. They don’t play music. They offer a solid range of real ales and a fine selection of guest ales. There are 236 Wetherspoons in The Good Beer Guide. The only people who have a legitimate reason to dislike Spoons are neighbouring publicans. Let’s face it, they are great pubs and they got even better after they were boycotted by the kind of person who retweets James O’Brien.

 


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