Called to the bar

If you’ve missed the endless articles whingeing about pub closures, it must be because you’ve been too blotto to focus. It is impossible for a mediocre drinking hole to close its doors for the last time without some thirsty hack reaching for his collected George Orwell essays and waxing lyrical about the Moon Under Water and the death of the English pub. It’s true that many pubs are closing (27 a week, according to the Campaign for Real Ale) and demographic changes have called last orders for numerous decent pubs — and some gems — in areas where changing populations have seen demand dissolve quicker than a morning Alka-Seltzer. But the main reason why most pubs closed is simple: they were dreadful.

When I consider all the bad pubs I’ve frequented it’s hard to select the worst. I might have cited a certain moth-infested dive in Kennington, but so many letters had fallen off its sign I’m not sure what it was called.