Why did it take so long to give Tim Martin a knighthood?

The news that Tim Martin, the founder of JD Wetherspoon, has been given a knighthood in the New Year Honours list caused predictable outrage among the perpetually outraged. The gong was awarded for Sir Tim’s ‘services to hospitality and culture’, but the usual crybabies on social media asked whether it was really because he supported Brexit.

The real question is why did it take so long? The first Wetherspoons opened in 1979 (named after a teacher who told him that he would never amount to anything). There are now more than 800 of them. His services to hospitality and culture are indisputable, but Wetherspoons is more than a successful business. It is almost a charity. No one has done more than Sir Tim to shield pubgoers from the cost-of-living crisis.

When inflation soared in 2022, Wetherspoons could easily have raised its prices. Instead, it posted a £30 million loss. The company has since returned to profitability and its food prices have risen modestly, but its drink prices remain so low that they defy economics. I was recently in Newcastle where Spoons were selling Abbot Ale for £1.49. In Thirsk, Doom Bar was going for £2.06 a pint. Even in London, Spoons sells beer at half the price of its competitors. In Brixton, for example, London Pride is available for £2.78.

As I type this, I feel I must have been dreaming, but I am sure I recently saw Ruddles sold in Spoons for £1.15 a pint. That is less than I paid for a pint in a campus bar at a northern university in the mid-1990s. In 1995 prices, it is 59p.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

It is often claimed that Spoons can sell alcohol at little more than cost price because they get a discount on beer that is reaching its sell-by date. I am reliably informed that this is an urban myth. If you think about it, a chain of hundreds of busy pubs cannot depend on suppliers constantly over-producing. The truth is that Sir Tim can drive a hard bargain because he sells a lot of beer to a lot of customers – and he has a lot of customers because he runs good pubs that sell cheap beer.

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.

Sir Tim has achieved all this because he has high standards, pays attention to detail and loves the pub trade. At the age of 68, he could be sitting back and counting his money. Instead, he spends his life driving an old Volvo up and down the country inspecting his boozers. He tries to visit all of them every year, an average of more than two a day. For this labour of love, the nation owes him its thanks.

The ability to drink in a pub as often as you like is every Briton’s birthright. For centuries, it was something that anybody from any walk of life could do. In recent years, as the price of a pint has risen towards five or six pounds – and, in London, seven pounds – it has become a luxury. Buying a round of drinks has become a serious business. The idea of being a regular in a local is dying out among people under the age of 40. It is simply unaffordable.

Except in Spoons. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s been doing it for decades. Arise Sir Tim! No one deserves it more.