pound pub

Could this innovation revitalise our rural high streets?

This could get interesting: a second pub has opened in Greater Manchester which serves drinks for one solitary pound – and I don’t just mean half a pint of lime and soda with enough ice in it to sink the Titanic.

The imaginatively-named Pound Pub (it was never likely to be called The Crab and Pot of Basil, I suppose), whose first outpost opened in Stockton, Middlesbrough last month, serves half pints of lager, bitter and cider for £1 while, if you’re feeling flush, you can have yourself a pint for £1.50. It should be said that you don’t get an awful lot more with your drink – no Sky Sports and no complimentary ramekins of honey-coated cashews – but you do get a beer. For a pound. And do you know what? I think this is excellent news.

I suppose I should be outraged. Think of Greater Manchester’s collective liver! Think of the rival pubs put out of business! Indeed, there were plenty of people on tap to voice their disapproval about the opening of the Pound Pub: “There are already enough pound shops and they’re rubbish too,” huffed one local salesman snootily to the Daily Mail. “All this bar is doing is selling cheap alcohol early in the morning to vulnerable people.”