The Mysteries of Samuel Smith's

Sunday 26 July 2009

I know plenty of people who hate Sam Smith's pubs because they don't sell Guinness or Stella. I fell in love with them shortly after moving to London as a student ten years ago. Their resolute stance against all prevailing fashion certainly appealed but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't their remarkable £1.60-a-pint pricing policy that kept me going back to places like the Chandos off Trafalgar Square and the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street.

Other than regularly boring people with the great bit of pub trivia that Samuel Smith was John Smith's cousin I've rarely given much thought to the company that brews Britain's cheapest pint but Pete Brown makes some interesting observations about them in his new book Hops and Glory. It's part history of India Pale Ale and part travelogue of Pete's attempt to recreate the voyage that took IPA halfway across the world to quench the thirsts of sozzled expats. Before coming up with that idea though Pete considered writing a piece of investigative journalism about Sam Smith's.

I've enjoyed Pete's previous beery books, Man Walks Into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind. Not only are they entertainmgly written they're also full of quotable nuggets I can't help but bother Joanne with. Ten pages into Hops and Glory I stopped to read this out aloud: "If Willy Wonka had been into beer instead of chocolate, he would have been called Samuel Smith". Pete sums up Sam Smith's pubs perfectly:

Sam Smith's pubs are cultish in both commonly used senses of the word. They look like they haven't been decorated since the 1970s, but not in a bad way. They only stock their own brands of everything. They don't advertise. They don't talk to writers or journalists, even those who love them. They don't even have a website

What really interested Pete about Sam Smith's though was "why are they so secretive. What they've got to hide. How they come to own so many pubs in London, given that they're based in Yorkshire and these pubs must be worth a fortune."

I'm halfway through Hops and Glory and glad that Pete chose IPA as his subject rather than Sammy Smith's. Still, I'd now really like to know the answers to those questions, wouldn't you?

Related Posts
Three Sheets to the Wind - piece I wrote about Pete's previous book on my other blog, Carnival Saloon

Related Links
Pete Brown's Beer Blog - worth reading even if you're teetotal
Amazon: Hops and Glory- buy Pete's excellent new book
Amazon: Three Sheets to the Wind- Pete's beer world tour
Amazon: Man Walks into a Pub- enlightening (and funny) history of the British boozer
Sam Smith's London Pub Map - where to find a pint of Old Brewery

Even A Freak Deserves Better Than This

Monday 6 July 2009

Joanne will tell you that I'm forever pointing out evidence that the world's going to hell in a handcart. Yes, it can get tiresome hearing me getting a bit Littlejohn, but if you've been unfortunate enough to see the cover of this week's OK! magazine, how can you disagree?



Not only has the rag given itself official tribute status but how can that picture (which apparently cost $500,000) be anything but tawdry? I've never been much of a Jacko fan and but I'd still rather remember him like this.



The tribute I did enjoy, of course, was from America's finest news source: The Onion Remembers Michael Jackson.

President Poindexter

Monday 22 June 2009

I love The Onion. Not only does it usually make me laugh out loud each week it's also an essential weapon in defending America against two common complaints from my fellow countrymen a) Americans are stupid; b) Americans "don't do irony".

Of late though I have been disappointed that The Onion seem unable to really satirise Barack Obama. Whereas George Bush and his neon-con cronies were a humorist's dream all The Onion seem willing to mock the new President for is being a nerd. For example:

• Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale
  
• Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

I thought about this as I finished reading Sarah Vowell's book The Partly Cloudy Patriot at the weekend. In her essay The Nerd Voice she says, "What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name nickname Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes." The book came out in 2002 and that sentence now reads like a prophecy.

At the heart of the essay is Vowell's regret that Al Gore denied "his innate nerdiness" because the press favoured Dubya's jock image to Gore's smarty-pants geek. What America needed, Vowell correctly asserts, is a leader who knows a lot of stuff in great details and not a failed oilman whose favourite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

At the end of the essay Vowell writes that

I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the start; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism of 17th-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover*; build a shortwave radio out of coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's Two Sleepy People, Johnny Cash's Five Feet High and Rising, and You Got the Silver by the Rolling Stones...

I have tracked Obama's geek appeal for some time and read his two books. From this brief survey I have no doubt that the president can complete 90% of those tasks; his upbringing in Hawaii certainly gives him an advantage when it comes to coconuts. I guess time will tell if an in-depth knowledge of Spider-Man comics is an advantage in dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the worst economy in living memory.

What I Learnt At The Pub Quiz Last Night

Wednesday 10 June 2009

My team, Jossy's Giants, enjoyed a famous victory at the Dartmouth Arms quiz last night. With a strong showing that put us in the top spot after the first six rounds we stumbled on the picture round, failing to identify the country of origin of any Scandinavian newspapers. So, with all to play for in the final 15 general knowledge questions we played a blinder of combined team brain power and triumphed with a six-point lead.

We didn't get all the answers right though. Things I learn last night include:

• The cancelled 1940 Olympic Games was scheduled for Tokyo (not Paris)
  
• Tippi Hedren is Melanie Griffith's mother (not Janet Leigh, she's Jamie Lee Curtis' mum, though I knew there was a Hitchcock connection)
  
• Flowers in the Rain, the first song played on Radio 1 is by the Move (not Manfred Mann)
  
• Carthage is on the site of modern-day Tunis (and not Algiers)
  

We were robbed of two points. Answering "What's the name of Barbie's sister?" we went for "Skipper". The answer given was Shelly but looking at this thorough Barbie history website it looks like were were right. Sadly, Rule 2 at the Dartmouth Arms is that "the quizmaster is always right".

My favourite wrong answer from those I marked was the team that thought Hercules was the name of the Duke of Wellington's horse. They'd confused the Waterloo warrior's steed with Steptoe and Son's nag.

We'll be defending our crown in two weeks time.

Related Links
The Dartmouth Arms

Meet The British

Wednesday 3 June 2009

For a slice of nutty TV take a look at this brilliant documentary that's been on BBC Four this week.

Meet the British is a compilation of clips from the 50s to 70s that the government produced to promote our fine nation to the rest of the world. A couple of Africans students marvelling at our efficient bus service(even in rural areas), an introduction to Cockney ryming slang and the wonders of ready meals.

Related Links
BBC Four - Meet the British

Welcome To My World

Friday 29 May 2009

 

I started writing my first blog, Carnival Saloon, in September 2007. At the time I was spending a lot of time at work explaining blogging best practice to various radio producers and presenters but not actually blogging myself. Carnival Saloon was born to see if I could practice what I preached and give me an outlet to do some writing.

The first post was about Battlestar Galactica, the second a review of a Rachel Unthank gig and the 17th some thoughts about beer. Pretty random stuff, but all things I was sufficiently interested in to want to write about. My friends seemed to enjoy this hodge-podge but it eventually became apparent that more people I didn't know were mainly looking at my music and MP3 posts. These were fun because the blog became more conversational and I challenged myself to post MP3s that might not be too common.

One of the bits of advice that I used to give would-be bloggers is stick to one thing and do it well. Taking my own medicine I decided to only write about music at Carnival Saloon and turn it into a fully-fledged MP3 blog. That's worked very well in many respects. More people look at that blog each month but fewer of those are my friends who either don't care for banjos or would prefer to know what I think of the new Star Trek film than hear a Phil Ochs track.

So here we are. A second blog for all the stuff I no longer write about at Carnival Saloon. You can expect occasional musings on such fascinating subjects as what I've watched on TV, cooked for dinner, read before going to bed, learnt at the pub quiz and cursed the modern world for. With any luck this will be a spin-off more like Frasier than Joey. But I'm making no promises.