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.
Martin is personally affable and down-to-earth, spends plenty of time on the road visiting his pubs, drives an old banger and loves Captain Beefheart. Were it not for his politics, he would probably be on his way to broad national treasure status.
It makes his decision to throw his weight – and notorious beer mats – behind Brexit all the more admirable. He has admitted leaving the EU made it more difficult to operate his business, so there is no faulting the man’s bravery. And given that he ended up on the right side of the vote, it is no surprise to hear he is to be knighted.
But politics aside, Martin has more than earned a gong for his services to drinkers. Wetherspoons did not expand to more than 800 premises and 40,000 employees by mistake. Just as McDonalds or Premier Inn raise the floor for burgers and hotels, Wetherspoons have created a minimum standard for British pubs.
If you want to open a boozer in the UK, you know you are likely to have to compete with a Spoons nearby. Inspired by Orwell’s dictums for his ideal pub, The Moon Under Water, Martin’s premises are by and large clean, consistent places, where you can get a drink and a meal more cheaply than almost anywhere else. They are also often in handsome old buildings, such the old opera house in Tunbridge Wells, or the Winter Gardens in Harrogate, which might otherwise have been torn down or hidden in private ownership.
Naturally I never go to Wetherspoons myself. I find the silent carpeted aesthetic, as though you were clearing out the cellar of a stricken cruise ship, rather depressing. The food is ghastly. To eat there you have to apply the same rule you do on an aeroplane – go for things that freeze well, like curry – which is not what I am looking for in a pub meal.
I prefer small, dark, crowded pubs in Hackney, filled with dreadful people just like me, where there is deafening music and we all pay £8 for a pint of over-hoppy IPA made in an old toilet in Peckham. Food-wise, I prefer a £12.50 scotch egg where the menu details the school the pig went to.
If I am a naive millennial being sold an illusion, that is my cross to bear. There is room in this country for more than one type of pub, and more than one type of pub-goer.
I’m pleased Wetherspoons exists and “Sir Tim”, patron saint of boozers, has more than earned his tap on the shoulder with the sword.
Can you wear a polo shirt to an investiture?
What’s the worst birthday?
This is usually considered a poor time of year to be born, celebration-wise. The thinking goes that your big day will forever be eclipsed by tinsel and Jools Holland.
Yet there is something magical about a late-December birthday. Christmas Day is most poetic, while Christmas Eve and Boxing Day are not far behind. You will always have friends and family close at hand and they will be in a gift-buying mood.
Friends born on these days have never complained, while those around New Year tend to build their birthday into the general festivities.
But a good friend reckons he has the worst birthday of all: January 3.
Everyone is bloated and liverish. January 2 you could just about tack-on to an extended New Year’s celebrations, but not the third day. People are back in the office, googling gyms, taking vows of sobriety. “Nobody wants to come out because they are all doing dry January or saving money,” he explains sadly.
Undeterred, a few years ago he organised a party nobody could say no to: a spin class. It was an endorphin-fuelled triumph. For those of us still polishing off the ham and claret, the moral is terrifying to consider: that more parties ought to start with exercise.