The Apprentice has been a guilty pleasure of mine ever since it started. Bailey doesn’t share my interest, so he missed out on watching the two teams attempt to lay on a themed food evening in a different London boozer.
The girls organised a “Bollywood night” – curry, music, dancing — in the King’s Head on Upper Street, Islington, which is a place I used to haunt back in the day. The boys put on a more formal Italian food evening in the Duke of Hamilton, Hampstead, a pub I haven’t been to, but it looked like it had some nice ales on. And did I catch a glimpse of Barclay Perkins livery?
Anyway, lest you think this is just an excuse to blog about my favourite TV programme, it got me thinking about themed nights in pubs. The idea in general sounds a bit tacky, and I’m not sure either of these were particularly good examples — though I do love a bit of Bollywood.
But the right theme, ideally but not necessarily focused on the beer, is potentially an excellent way for pubs to get new punters in. Tandleman wrote about a Welsh-themed night for St David’s day, which shows that you don’t have to have a particularly exotic theme. Some new beers, some different food, and dare I say it, some music, and you’ve suddenly given someone a reason to choose your pub that night. And maybe once they’re there, they’ll discover how nice and friendly you are, and how great your ales taste.
Photo: ex-soldier Simon is one of the contestants on The Apprentice. I’ve picked him because it’s about time a beer blog had some totty for the ladies…
Boak
The more I think about so-called binge drinking, the more I think it is a result of the Northern European attitude to work — the weekend feels like the only time people can really relax, after slogging through five or six days of boredom, stress and aggravation, and they want it to be something special, memorable and overwhelming.
We went to see 
A minor fascination of mine is how dramas supposedly set in the real world routinely invent London Boroughs (Walford, Sunhill) or whole towns up north (Weatherfield, Wetherton). But, of course, I’m always particularly interested in 
