Oh What A Time... - #157 Pubs (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

This week we’re popping into history’s local - it’s a whole episode dedicated to pubs! We’ve got a brief history of the British pub, this history of the pub landlord and how some pubs were designed to pull in punters from the tourist trail!And this week we’re discussing trousers, sex education at school, airports and much more; so if you’ve got something to contribute, you know what to do: [e-mail] if you want more from the show (including the audio from our first ever live show at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho), you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Water Time. Hello and welcome to O Water Time. It's a history podcast we look back on the past. But this morning, as we're recording, we're looking to the future. Because just as we were about to start recording, Ellis revealed that he's got to change his trousers very soon. Now, Tom, shall we try and guess why that might be? Well, let's just, the actual wording was, can we end five minutes early so I can change my trousers?

So I don't know. I have literally have no idea what has happened. Are we spitballing here, Chris? Are we guessing what's happening? You need five minutes. Are they painted on? I'm thinking, if you want to know, I'm thinking wet dream. Oh dear.

It's too early in the episode for that. I tell you one thing, all my school was in Welsh, so I don't know what you used to call it in English. But you know the lesson at school where you discuss things like the body and feelings, etc. What would you call that? Which, mate, that lesson did not happen in East London where I went to school. Did it not? I don't think we have that note.

The lesson where you're shown the video on puberty. Oh, science. That was science. Oh, sex education. Yeah, and sex education, all that kind of stuff. But ours was a specific, we did like six lessons on it. That's what it was. It wasn't a thing throughout there, yeah.

Six lessons. Must it call PSC or something, personal and social development or something. Or sex lessons. No, in our school it was a, we did a little short run where they covered all the juices. You had a short run on people. What have you missed it? I had measles. I had measles, right?

when in primary school we did nouns and verbs. Right, is that true? And like 37 years on, I've always got to Google it. My seven-year-old asked me what an adverb was yesterday. Oh, yeah, yeah. Even though I'm a writer, it's literally my job to know that sort of stuff, I immediately turned to Claire. Well, the problem is they changed the curriculum when we were at school,

so there was far less emphasis on that stuff. Yeah. And they brought it back now. Absolutely. So my daughter does. Adverbs and verbs and all that and, you know, etc. Transitive verbs, all of those things. We weren't taught that stuff in the state system in the 80s and 90s.

Did you have to put a condom on a banana in sex education? I thought that was an urban myth. You did that? I thought that was an urban myth. Unless that is a false memory that has been created, I have a memory of that happening. Our sex education nurse definitely produced a condom from somewhere. You had a nurse coming. in and do the lesson.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A nurse. Do you know what I remember her? One of the things I vividly remember from this lesson. And the point I was going to make was... Sex Education nurse sounds quite sexy, you know. It doesn't it? Sounds like the sort of thing someone would Google.

Well, the... But it white my history before someone sees that. The point I was going to make was, can you imagine them in a wet dream if you hadn't done that stuff at school and not known what it was. Horrendous. It would have been... Yeah, you're a humble, young.

Roman son in rural Gloucestershire in 1800. And then you're like, oh my God, Jesus is in my penis and he's punishing me. Demons have visited me in the night. It's all over the straw. It's all over the straw. We had a sex education nurse and she came in. She produced a condom from somewhere, but I remember... Like a magic trick.

Like Paul Daniels. Was it behind your ear? But I remember what she did was, I remember when we were talking about, we were talking about talking about wet dreams and she said, right, does anyone know how much comes out when a boy ejaculates and everyone went really quiet? And then she pointed at Justin, who was in the front row, went, Justin, how much comes out when you ejaculate?

And I've never seen a more embarrassed boy. I thought, what kind of question is that? He is going to crumble into dust. And she said, yeah, you're going to say? And he went, I know. And she went, it's about a tablespoon. Yeah. And he went, yeah, yeah.

Table Spoon is a disgusting measurement. But that would mark you for the rest of your time. You would then be, you know, cum spoon kid or whatever. You would be whatever. Hey, what's going on here? Uninvented phrase would be knocked around. But that would be you forever. The old cum spoon kid.

On your wedding day, you're desperate for your best man, not to mention it in the speech. Doesn't Rebecca look beautiful? And I mean, I mean. You know, the bridesmaids as well look absolutely fantastic. I'm applaud for the bridesmaids. But the reason I'm standing here today is I've got to talk to you all about the cum spoon kid. When we get to pudding, do not use your spoons. Do you know, sex education in my school, it was one lesson and it was done in science.

I think it was about six classes in my year. And we knew that another class had had sex education. So we knew we were coming up. It was a tremendous excitement we were going to get the one sex education. education lesson. Oh, I can imagine you. Really? And then we walked into our science

class one day and Mr. Keyworth was like, right, today is sex education. This is how immature we all were. We all went, yeah! Like, kids bang in the tables. When you say they were banging the table, didn't you mean? He, I can still remember

to this day, he could not be asked. He could not be, he was like, oh, this is, why am I got into science, I didn't want to have to do this. It's impossible. to expect your class to take that seriously. I know. I know.

Yeah. Well, maybe the banana with a condom didn't happen, then maybe that is a false memory. So what were the lessons? There was a lesson every two weeks, I think, where we would discuss just kind of general teenage vibe. It was just two weeks. It was one and done.

My secondary school was very much not about discussing your feelings. How to bury them. And how it was more about being good at rugby, exactly, and not crying. Occasionally you would riff it. I remember the deputy head once planned a lesson. And I remember he sat in front of us and he went, yeah, we had a kind of young preacher at chapel on Sunday. Does that make you feel like, if we've come on, we don't care?

The church I went to Elle, this is the thing where I did have a little bit of that because I went to church when I was younger. There was a youth group there and they used to run a weekly thing called Challenge and Chill. where we would meet and we would discuss our feelings. And I remember one particularly lame Friday evening where we listened to the entirety of Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette and had to talk about how it made us feel. Oh my God.

And also that song, What if God was one of us? That was a long discussion about how that made us. What if God was one of us? Which one would it be, me Chris Skull or Tom Crane? It made me feel like I didn't want to be there. The weirdest part for mine was when the teacher was handing around the bananas and the condoms for everyone, he got to me and said, you'll be needing a marrow, and then put a full marrow on my desk.

A marijuana certificate. Come on now. Go on now. He produced one of those little pens from Argos, didn't he? The IKEA Benson. It popped to the betting shop just before he got to you, didn't he? Well, surely it would be a different veg. Surely it would be a pea or a fruit.

It's got to be something small. Here you go. And an Edomarmy being. Well, there we go. Welcome to, oh, what a time. We didn't get to the bottom of why you need to change your trousers. Oh, yes, of course. Yes.

I put an extremely old pair of Swansea City tracts of bottoms from our time in the Premier League, which is now ever so distant in the rear view mirror. I bought these, I think, in our first season. And I really liked it at the time because they've got a kind of, They're blue, but with the electric orange added ass three stripe. But they are now so sharpy and disgusting. I only wear them if I'm not doing the school run and I'm getting the kids, so breakfast's ready and all that kind of stuff.

But I'm going to the dentist, and I do think that I should treat my dentist with a modicum of respect. I'll put a slightly nicer pair of trousers on, so I'm going to do that. You must, you must. So hello, welcome to Oh, What a Time. Today's episode should be a really fun one, I think, actually. I love the stuff that I've read today and we're talking about later. We're talking about the Great British Pub.

In my part later on, I'm going to be telling you about the history of landlords and also how basically pubs went from small cottage industries to what they are today. And I'll be talking about pub myths. And I've got a brief history of the pub, including some of the contenders for Britain's oldest pub. Excite. Oh, lovely. Is ye old Jerusalem in Nottingham in there? I can't remember off the top of my head.

I don't think so. I have had a pint in a couple of the pubs that claim to be the oldest pub in Britain. That is a reassuringly old name, isn't it? The old Jerusalem. It's really, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not called the Amazon Depot, is it? As we'll get into, there are many contenders for Britain's oldest pub. A fattenating.

More than we could even go through. But we'll try. Now, before we get to that, there are many contenders for the best email for this week. And there's only one winner. It's from Nicola Duncan. And Nicola Duncan has emailed in to say, an amusing airport experience. So should we crack into this correspondence

before we get into the history? Oh, yes, please. So, you sent us some correspondence, have you? Well, let's take a look at you then. Nicola says, Dear fantastically hilarious pod team, isn't that nice? Thank you, Nicola. In regards to the brief topic of bizarre standards of food, alcohol and behaviour in airports

in the latest episode, number 156, we talked about the fact that no matter what time it is, you will eat a full English and have a pint, whatever time you're in an airport. Yeah. I was immediately reminded of an experience that a friend experienced in a large major UK airport. She sat down in a restaurant,

ordered a glass of wine, and looked at the lunch menu. This is early in the day. She chose a hearty-looking bowl of pasta and went to order only to be told that only the breakfast menu was still running as it was still the morning. So she had to have a bowl of breakfast.

porridge with a glass of wine. Make it make sense. We all know the societal norms related to certain times a day, hold no sway in airports, so why serve wine but no lunch menu? Thank you, Nico from Leeds. I love that idea of a full bowl of porridge and a glass of wine, which I'm assuming must be like eight in the morning. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Because Edward Snowden, remember him? Yeah, of course, yeah. He lived in an airport for 39 days. I'm assuming this was after the sort of seismic event in his life. Yeah, yeah. So he was the whistleblower. And he hadn't received his Russian papers, I think.

Right. So he was stuck in the airport and had to live in the airport because his American passport had been cancelled. Was he sleeping on the seats or was he using like the travel lodge or whatever? This I'd love to know because if I'm just to admit, it's quite unfashionable to say this. I really enjoy air travel as long as it's. from a big airport. Okay, yeah. The small, like,

South End Airport has the fucking temerity to refer to itself as London's South End. Come on, South End. You're nowhere near London. But conversely, L, my favourite airport, so let's say when you fly from Heathrow to some small place in the south of France or whatever, and you land, and it's literally just,

like a sort of room you'd have in a small primary school. No, no, no. Well, by all means, fly into Cardiff Airport. Right. Because it's like getting a bus in a rural area, Cardiff Airport. No, no, no. I let them be big. Really? Okay.

Let me browse in Fat Face, even though I've got absolutely no intention of buying anything from Fat Face. Well, with that in mind then, how long could you do an Assange? If you had money, we're not talking about the terminal here where Tom Hanks had no money and had to work out how to sort of feed himself when he was in the airport. I mean, how long could you live in an airport happily? if it's a big one, you choose which one you want, you've got your catch. How long are you enjoying yourself there? What, Heathrow a gutwick.

Whatever you want. Dealers' choice. I reckon I could do eight years at Heathrow. Terminal five, I have actually considered not getting on the plane just living there anyway. Just loving it. So talk me through a normal day then, for Ellis James. Let's not say the first day, because that's too exciting. So you're a year and a half in to your eight-year stint.

What are you doing? Well, breakfast at Pret. And then thoughts turned to lunch. So I'm thinking, is it going to be Café Rouge? Is it going to be it too? I think I might do an exu today. Is it going to be that weird one that does that Gatwick where you can buy a sort of a pint,

a sort of braised beef and also like a fry-up? I might go there. Although how would you exercise? He throws massive. Will I be listening to some world music in Giraff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you just think to yourself, all right then. Here I am. I'm at gate number one.

I'm going to run to gate number 180. It's fine to run as well, Elle, because part of the experience of being in the airport is running because you're late to your plane. So nobody thinks it's weird. And if I can get to gate before they close the gate for the 155 flight to Farrow,

I've run. I don't know what I've won. I haven't won anything. But it's just a little test. I'm setting myself. Although I've just Googled it, Snowden did say he kept himself busy by reading Russian literature. Lots of books in W.H.

Smiths. Oh, that's good. He learnt Russian alphabet, but he did say one of the problems was he was in the transit zone, which is a sterile zone, constant loudspeaker announcements every day. Flight from Washington's arrive, flight from London's arrived, flight from Barcelona's arrived. I heard them for hours when I was there. For persons there indefinitely, you can drive into psychosis. I hadn't considered that, the bloody loudspeaker. Massage area is quite nice. And that will have sort of whale noise. You can get away from the Al Spiekers once a day for about 30 quid. You can buy year plugs and boots.

Yeah. This is good. Actually not a bad idea. I think you should do it, Elle. The amount of books, though, he read, well, he read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He read Chekhov. The W.H. Smith thing is massive because it means you get a constant turnover of new literature, new books. You've got newspapers.

And newspapers? Yeah, exactly. You'd be so well informed. You'd miss your kids. Izzy would find it quite hard to understand why you were doing it. Yeah, there's a dumb son. There's a dumb son. There's a done so to everything, isn't it?

Well, thank you very much. Free airport Wi-Fi. Oh, wow. You could podcast there? I have podcasted from airports. Have you? Have you? When?

During Euro 2016, when I should really, I've been doing the show with John on Radio X, but Wales would get into the semi-final. I should really have been concentrating on flying the plane, but it was... Yeah. And I was like, listen, yeah, yeah, sure I can be on the radio, but I will be next to the Enterprise Car Higher Place in Toulouse Airport,

and I don't care if you're angry with me, because last night was the best. night of my life. So I have done radio shows from airports more than once. Also, the crucial one is you're saving completely on rent or mortgage. Yes. So if you see it as like an army stint where you're away and you're coming back and you're saying to Izzy, yes, I've missed my children's childhood. However, look at the money I've saved. Although she's still spending it. Oh yeah, that's an issue, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not earning anything. You'd have to take vitamin D from boots. because there'd be no access to sunlight.

Well, we're looking to this. I mean, you'd have to think about it as what we're saying. Nicola, thank you so much for emailing in. I absolutely love the idea of a glass of wine with porridge. I do weirdly think there's something acceptable about a beer early in the morning in an airport. For me, wine feels like a weird choice. I don't know why. That feels different.

It's a bit like a close to a shot, isn't it? Yeah, a 7 a.m. wine says to me, she's left me. That's what it says to me. A beer says this is the start of a great weekend. Or a wine at 7 a.m. in an airport, so it's going to me, French writer. Oh yeah, that's nice. Critically very successful. But a bit underground.

Yes. Yeah. Two seconds. So it's my son's birthday on Saturday as we're recording this. So we're organising the party and I've had a lot of helium balloon silverford. And the box is massive. But it is obviously, as you can imagine, the lightest box I've had a picture in my life.

Is the box floating? I got such a shot. I actually stood up. I lifted it up like a toy. You know, the safety video because it's so big. I probably braced myself. Did someone see this happen? Is it just being delivered to the door?

I thought I thought bloody hell I wish he was here to help me curry this I lifted It was a delivery guy there He threw it over the house Oh that's amazing

I've honestly lifted a slice I've told us is heavier than this box. Do you know what? It must weigh less than a cardboard box. Oh my God. Because of the helium balloon in it, it would weigh less than an empty box.

I love the idea of you bracing yourself before picking it up and him seeing that. There you go make your side of yet. No problem. Hey! Oh, right. It's immediately above your head. That's really funny.

You sometimes get that. There's that weird feeling. Let's say you pick up what you think is a full carton of tropicana or whatever it happens to be and it happens to be empty and your body is anticipating a different weight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a strange thing. It's like a, there's obviously your mind is preparing itself for something which it just isn't.

I always find that quite a sort of weird physical thing. You know, obviously I don't want to assert my alpha dominance here, Tom, but it happens to me quite a lot at the gym when I've been extremely heavy weight. And then I might just be moving a slightly lighter way out of the way And I'm like, oh, that's easy. God, I'm strong. Absolutely. Just looking yourself in the mirror, enjoying the view. Thank you so much, Nicola, for that brilliant email.

What a lovely image that is, your friend with porridge and wine. If you have something you want to send into us, be it airport related, whatever, history related. If you could imagine such a thing, here's how you get in contact with the show. All right, you horrible look. Here's how you've got. can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at ohwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. Right, good stuff. Thank you to all our patron oh what a time all timers and one of the benefits of that tier is that we will try and figure

out where in history you may have been. And this week of next is Brenda Beckett use your scholarly minds to figure out where she may have been in a past life. I'm imagining she's like really good at doing, you know, when they used to do scrolls, they'd have like an incredibly ornate opening letter. So it'd be like a massive C. Yeah, yeah. Which is taking about four and a half years to colour in. Victorian Education List. Oh, that's good. And a pilot. when it came to educating young girls in urban areas. Wow. I think Brenda Beckett actually, she was a campaigner.

Okay. Campaigner sort of 1880s, stood up in the House of Commons. Quite a sort of strict approach that maybe wouldn't be okay now. Oh, terrified. But you have to see it within the confines of the time. Yeah, she used to hit kids. Yeah, but she believed that they should be educated. There's a lot of revisionism, isn't there, about her career now

because of the extreme she went to to get results? Oh, they all passed. They were just terrified doing it, yeah. And they'd be called Brenda's boys and Brenda's girls. And they'd all passed, but they were all absolutely fucking terrified. If you said the words cat a nine tail around them. They call her the mother-treaser of Victorian education, don't they? Because there's been such a revisionism of what she was like.

I think that's exactly, I'm thinking sort of rather straight, stiff outfits as well. never looked particularly happy in the photographs. Always had a cane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, completely. But really helped those street urchins. Yeah, Brenda, like that. I think, Brenda, you've got off the best out of everyone who's ever had their past life examined.

Yeah, I thought that as well. As we were saying it, I was like, she's had a real stalky at Brenda Bleck. Well, if you want to become an oh-what-a-time all-time, get two bonus episodes every month. Here's how. Hello again, you are. horrible lot enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love

by becoming a Patreon supporter today? For a mere handful of farthings, you can get ad-free shows, two bonus subscriber episodes each month, access to all the past bonus eps, first dibs on live tickets, and even help decide what subjects the boys cover next. Your support makes everything possible

So sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's a time or oh what's a time.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling. And don't forget, if you want to become an old old time or you can suggest episode subjects, which is exciting. This week's subject, though, is pubs.

And I'm going to deliver you now the history of the pub in Britain. ready. Fantastic. The pub has been a part of British life for well over 1,000 years. That's amazing. What do you think were on those first taps? The three taps as you went in. Mead? Yeah, mead. There's a lot of mead chat coming. So, okay, great. So buckle up. So the pub is obviously one of the nation's most enduring institutions. In fact, we have 20 different words for a place that sells alcohol in the English language, which tells you. everything you need to know about how important it is to the British. Yeah.

I'll rattle off a few now. Inns, taverns, alehouses, public houses, hostelries, mughouses, boosers. And then you get into the internal politics of the place itself. The bar, the lounge, the snub. And that great architectural miracle of the modern pub, the ladies' toilets, which in many places actually turned up suspiciously late.

Ladies' toilets weren't in pubs until quite late in the history of the pub, is amazing. It's funny the snug, because when I first went into a pub and saw a snug, I thought, this is the poshest pub I've ever been in. But looking back, I think that pub may have been the roughest pub I've ever been in. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's funny that, isn't it? I worked in a pub with a snug. What is the snugg? Is it for the, like, the relaxed bit, for the gentleman, that was the idea of it. The pub with a snug sounds like one of those Julia Donaldson books, isn't it? Because there were various rules on like if you were, if you'd gone into the pub straight from work and you would you work boots on,

you were to be in the lounge or all that kind of stuff. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. It's a very, it's a, you don't see them a huge month anymore. The dictionary definition is a small, comfortable public room in a pub or in. And they'd often be like frosted glass and stuff. Yeah. Lovely.

But it was the kind of posher bit. Where we had a beer on New Year's Eve in Cornwall in that small Cornish pub, Were we in a snug? That was just a room off the bar. It was quite a cosy little room. No, but it wasn't closed. Yes, I'd say that. It needs a door, doesn't it?

It needs to be enclosed, I'd say. I don't, yeah. Not according to the dictionary definition, but in terms of our definition, yes. The Romans had taverns in Britain, particularly in London, but those were more like wine bars and roadside drinking places

that serve soldiers, traders and travellers. So the wine bar, in many respects, predates the pub. Interesting. Wow. In London. But the real ancestors of the British pub, though, emerge in the Middle Ages when local alcohol production became normal household business. People brewed ale at home. This unlocked a big understanding for me, right? So the British pub in the Middle Ages became household businesses. So people would be brewing ale at home. Obviously, a lot of mead. Occasionally they made some wine. Can you imagine how bad middle-aged wine must taste. Home-made middle-aged wine. English wine from the Middle Ages. My dad in the 90s made homemade some wine from like a sashay or something

and it was absolutely undrinkable. And that was in 1990s. You rewind a thousand years. You're dying if you drink middle age wine. Also, think about the weather. You need good weather for grapes to thrive. And you're in Somerset and it's... It's 1350.

It's been raining for nine months. So, like, in the Middle Ages, the pub was like a house, your house, and you'd be selling wine or mead and homemade ale, basically. But you'd be selling it to your neighbours. So the old English, you get early words like, Iluhus, which is like ale house, and drink-hus, drinking house, and wine-hus, with wine house. My old English is great, actually.

I've nailed that. So from the beginning, the pub wasn't like a fancy invention. The gastro pub is thousand. of years away. It was basically, I've made too much booze come around and buy some. That was how pubs effectively started. Got you. So how do we know that alehouses existed that far back, like a thousand years ago? We know because they're mentioned in law. In 1997 during the reign of King Athelred, yes, that's the unready one, a set of legal rules known as the wantage code included fines for fighting in an alehouse.

Now, this is interesting, because the fines varied depending on whether or not someone got injured. And more specifically, whether someone died as a result of the fight. In which case, I think a fine is not enough. If you killed someone in a pub fight, I think it has to then go to court and then prison, surely.

You're looking at custodial sentence. Exactly. You're not just giving the barman two shillings or whatever. to be your two groats. I'm going, sorry, mate. Tell his family, will you? The Middle Ages is so mad. You've killed someone in a pop.

Tapping the apology pot going, you've killed that guy. You need to put a groat in here. You've cost me a customer there. Exactly, yeah. So the fact that they were writing into law, the rules applied within alehouses tell you, tells you that alehouses were common enough. They needed regulations.

So there was enough of them, which was obviously need to be written into law. but also that men were getting drunk in there, usually with weapons, and terrible things were happening in these alehouses. Wow. Another reason not to go back to a middle-aged pub in your one-day time machine. I hadn't thought about that.

That's so interesting, the idea of weapons and alcohol, the fact that people would have been armed at that point in some manner. Yeah. So as I'm reading this, I was getting the impression these are quite dangerous places. And we'll come back to that. But the question you're all going to be asking is, what is Britain's oldest pub, right? And actually, it's incredibly messy

as we touched on at the start of the episode. So according to historic England, the oldest surviving pub building in England is often said to be the George Inn in Somerset, dating to the late 1300s, early 1400s. Scotland's oldest pub claim is usually the sheep hid in in Edinburgh, though parts of the structure are later. But then in Wales,

Have you been to the Skirid Inn, El, near Abergavenny? Where is it? No one happened. That claims to have been opening and operating since 1,110 AD. Wow. Wow. And they link it hints to Shakespeare and ghosts, naturally. But when the building itself, the Skirid Inn has been scientifically tested,

it turns out that most of what is there today is mainly a 17th century. a building. So perhaps more a coaching in than medieval tavern. What was Shakespeare doing Abaghavendi? Writing retreat?

It feels so unlikely he was there for some reason. I don't... Four hundred years before he was born. There is so much myth around old pubs, isn't there? Not to call them fibbers, but it feels unlikely

that he was summering in Abugavani, doesn't it? I don't know. Maybe he was. Nice part of the world? Yeah. There is a stronger

Welsh contender for the oldest licensed pub, which is the Grows Inn near Conwy, which has been operating since 1570s. But this is interesting because this is where that licence bit begins to matter, because formal pub licensing in England and Wales dates from 1552. Scotland introduced it later 1756. And pub licensing comes from the fact that so many people

were just brewing their concoctions at home. So there was a need to regulate the industry. That's where pub licensing comes from. Interesting. So when you're looking for Britain's oldest pub, it's probably best to be looking at Britain's oldest licensed pub, which of the Grows-in in Conway from 1570s is, because licensing came in in England and Wales in 1552.

Okay. Now, how did you know it was a pub? If you were walking down a medieval street, right, how would you know which building was the pub? Now it's very easy, right? You can look at a building and almost immediately tell whether it's a pub or not, but it was a lot more difficult in the medieval ages. Firstly, because not many people could read.

So if you had a big sign that said the Royal Oak, you've got no idea what that sign says. So it's unlikely you're going to go in and get drunk. So in medieval Britain, they came up with a really brilliantly simple idea, which was that if this was a pub, you would go outside and you'd put a big pole outside the door, and you'd decorate that pole in greenery. So like ivy, leaves, branches.

And they were called things like the ale pole or the ale steak or the ale bush. Basically, it was a nonverbal sign that said booze is sold here. Interesting. Or just a hammered guy outside leaning against the wall. Another nonverbal sign that booze is sold here. Chaucer references this idea in his works. He says he saw a big garland as big as if it were for an ale steak. So ale stakes were well known for signifying that there was a pub.

So is this sort of like the history of the pub sign? Is that where that's come from? Well, Tom, you've neatly bringing me on to this next section, which is that the system worked fine in a small village where you've maybe got one or two buildings dotted down a high street. But in a big city like London, where you've got row after rows of terraced buildings, one leafy stick isn't going to stick out enough,

to tell pubs apart from everything else. So landlords began adding symbols and pictures to their buildings. And this is how you start getting the pub names you recognise today. Like the Swan, the Red Lion, the Golden Key. And in 1393, pub identification became a legal requirement in England, which pushed signs to become more permanent and standardised. And over time, those symbols evolved into the swinging pub signs we know today?

When did the big signs that said sky sports come up? When were they first put up? August 1992, when football began. This is how I know pub is good. If I go into like the toilet and there's a poster on the wall and it is from a very outdated football tournament like Euro 2016 or Euro 2020. I love going to pubs where it's like the lack of attention to the signs around the place. Yeah, yeah.

F.A. Carling Premiership shown here. Yes. Yeah. Carling Black Label served here. There's always that weird metallic frame it's in as well, very thin. Metallic frame above a urinal. Yeah. Oh, gross.

Love it. So there used to be something in the past that was really common on the last I went to on the early Nauties when you go down Valaraki. You'd have like reps outside of nightclubs and bars pulling you. you in. That's what used to happen with the British pub in London. Publicans would be very proactive. They would stand outside and call people in to their pubs like a rep in Valaraki. There's a great example. There's a medieval poem called Peers Plowman. And in this poem, a man supposedly is heading to church but gets intercepted by the brewer,

who's basically a medieval pubbed out, who greets him politely and then gets straight to the point, I've got good ale. And then he goes into this pub. the poem, the pub is buzzing, laughter, shouting, singing, total social chaos. You've got priests in there, officials, tradesmen, labourers, street cleaners, rat-catchers, cobblers, butchers. And it's the kind of

the equivalent of walking into your local and seeing everyone you didn't want to bump into. And crucially, when the regular spot a new face in the poem, they do what pub goers have done forever. They try and get him to buy around. So via this poem, we can see that the medieval pub experience wasn't a million miles from

what you might get in your local pub on a Friday night. And you know what's so exciting talking about the pub from a thousand years ago through today? Because if you go a thousand years ago, it still feels so exciting. So you can see why the pub became such a fixture. And for many people as well, domestic life, especially in the past,

you're in cramped, cold, crowded environment. Sometimes the whole family sleeping in the same room. But in the pub, you can go. It's spacious. You can eat and drink, meet friends, play games, flirt, gossip, sing songs and hear stories, be in somewhere that feels a lot bigger than your own life and your own house. That's sound good.

The pub wasn't just a business, it was a big community living room. But then also, as the pub becomes so central to life, especially in the medieval ages, it kind of becomes central to excess. So in Tudor England, for example, people developed an incredible range of slang for people who drank too much. So some of the colourful terms they had in Tudor, England include an ale knight.

This one I love, a tavern hunter. Like that. A common drunker, as well as various phrases about chasing the tavern fox or shooing his goose. So it's inventive, it's mocking, and it tells you that heavy drinking, even in Tudor times, was common enough to require a whole vocabulary. But there's that one phrase, a tavern hunter, which means a man who never leaves the pub. And when you look at how old so many of these pubs are in England and more widely Britain, and how many people in those pubs would have drunk, fought, sunk, collapsed and died over the centuries.

Is it no surprise that so many of those pubs are said to be haunted? Because does the tavern hunter ever truly leave? I'll leave you with that. Very interesting. That was genuinely fascinating. It's maybe think about something else, by the way, another good thing about your time in Heathrow Airport

is that they have pubs, which will be full of people who are in a great mood because they're about to go on holiday. So you can easily slip into conversations and meet new people every night as you go to the weather spoons, have a Guinness. Where you off to then? Exactly. I bet that. Oh, brilliant.

That'd be great. How long are you going before? 10 days? Nice, nice, nice. What do I do? I live here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are you going?

Yeah, I'm not going anywhere. Well, I mean, I'll be going to books later on because I need some for 10. I'm not seen sunlight for six years. But yeah, no, no, I live right here. I miss the kids. I do miss the kids. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

But the Wi-Fi is good, so I face-tell them all the times. Great. So there you go. That's the end of part one of the pub. If you want to get part two right now, you can. And what will you be talking about, gentlemen? I'll be talking about the history of landlords and also how the pub industry turned from the cottage industry to the behemoth that it is today. And I'll be talking about pub myths. Is that where the term cottage industry comes from? I think it probably is. Well, there you go. I'm not even going to look it up. Yeah, yeah, let's just assume it is.

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