Bah Humbug from Bar Humbug

My local boozer, The Pint and Fight, can be a pretty strange place sometimes. Whilst the people are good, the beer is good and the staff are brilliant, the Landlord can be a miserable old so-and-so. I’ve encountered this in other pubs as well – breweries must either specifically select candidates to run their pubs who have a high grumpiness factor or perhaps they have to undergo special misery training before being allowed behind the bar?

Our particular landlord, Hugh Jaynus, makes regular appearances behind the taps (unlike a lot of landlords who leave it all to their staff), serves the odd punter during busy times and even cracks the occasional joke but just try asking him for change of a £20 note so as you can get a taxi home (after drinking his beer all night) and you’ll get “What do you think I am, a bloody bank?” or worse! Request a coffee for the missus and he’ll reply with “This isn’t a bloody café you know”. You get the picture I’m sure.

He does however do a lot of good work and is very generous… There’s a swear box behind the bar with the money going to charity – and 90% of the cash in it is his!

The Pint and Fight is a busy old pub and can be very noisy when the juke box is ramped up on a Friday night with the latest “Scouse House” tunes booming out. This drives most of the locals to go home (or elsewhere) fairly early so that those who will be going clubbing later can move in to drink the alcopops until the time comes for them to go for a punch up in Church Street.

Hugh smiles gracefully all through this. He’s a bit old to like dance music but the sound of the old Cash Piano going ker-ching has him almost tap dancing with glee… that is until someone innocently asks if there is any food available and they will be answered with “Do I look like a chef? If you’re hungry have a pepperami”! He once said this to a youngish lad who then asked him if he had any vegetarian snacks. Hugh stated that he had some bags of Carrot Scratchings… “But the current batch happens to be pork flavoured”. Exit one vegetarian and his girlfriend!

There are many things that Hugh doesn’t like, but vegetarians seem to be top of the list at the moment… on a recent Saturday afternoon he treated us to a fantastic rant about their foibles which included such gems as:

“Vegetarians should all have their canine teeth ripped out as they have no use for them anymore” 
“If someone wants a vegetarian meal they should get one – vegetarian in a red wine sauce” 
“If a veggie comes to my place for dinner I offer him chicken… in my world, chicken is a vegetable” 
“Vegetarians shouldn’t eat cabbages… that’s cannibalism!” 
“I once asked all the vegetarians in the pub to raise their hands but then I realised that none of them would have the strength!”
“Sorry if I offended anyone with the vegetarian in a red wine sauce statement… I’ve realised that vegetarian should be served with white wine… how stupid of me!”
These are only the ones that I can write down - There’s much worse than this! In fact, Hugh will have a go at almost anyone:- Politicians (corrupt pooftahs), footballers (pretty-boy millionaire pooftahs… bring back Stanley Matthews), women (as the old saying goes – “you can’t live with ‘em but then again you can’t live with ‘em!”), foreigners (there’s a sign when you’re leaving Hartlepool that says “beyond here be dragons”) and many, many others.

Cheerful eh? I know that I can be really grumpy and miserable but the missus says that Hugh makes me look like a man who is so happy that he has just slept with blonde, nymphomaniac triplets on a waterbed in a brewery! Political correctness died the moment Hugh became a landlord.

Remember, next time you’re in your local and your landlord starts to go off on one it could be much worse, you could be listening to Hugh pontificating away from his place astride the Rock of Justice (as he sees it)! So go on… buy your Landlord a drink, pat him on the back and tell him that everything’s OK… then tell him to “build a bridge and get over it” and ask for a vegetarian toastie - he’ll probably bar you for it but what the heck!

Cheers!

Headlander

p.s… here’s Hugh’s favourite joke:

A guy walks up to the door of Shout with jump leads wrapped around his neck and asks if he can come in. The bouncer says, "Okay, but don't start anything."