The Wetherspoons chain is now the toast of the real ale drinking classes.
They offer some of the cheapest and best cask beers with quality, affordable food thrown in. There are a burgeoning number of them around the city and two of them have made in to the 2008 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, an honour akin to beiong granted sainthood by the Pope.

One of them is the Thomas Frost on Walton Road, where the Pub Column has enjoyed many a pint before going to see the Reds. Many Blues will no doubt have done so too. The other is the Richard John Blacker in Great Charlotte Street. This, of course, forms part of what was once the Blackler’s department store where, as all Beatles boffins will know, is where a young George Harrison temporarily served as an apprentice electrician before becoming one of the most famous men in the world. Mop Top guru and Pub Colum pal Grantie always points this out when he puts on his occasional hat as MC on the Magical Mystery Tour bus as it trundles around town. So it was appropriate that he and his seafaring wench Tugboat Cath should join Yours Truly on a first contact visit to Blackler’s especially since it is one of the eight city pubs in the chain celebrating an 18 day festival of UK beers.
Here, however, endeth the free advertising lesson, dear bretheren.
It may have been that it was a busy tea-time on a busy shopping day.
It may have been the small number of staff in ratio to a large string of thirsty, hungry punters lined up along the unfeasibly long bar waiting to be served.
Nwevertheless, the Pub Column patiently waited and waited, then waited some more. Finally, as Yours Truly’s turn came to be served a Foghorn Leghorn lookalike wandered in and got seen to immediately. It invariably sometimes happens so as Foghorn’s pint was being served the polite request was made through gritted teeth to be dealt with next.
“You wait your turn - I’m serving this lot,” came the frosty reply as a new set of thirsty Foghorns lined up alongside Leghorn number one.
After a long day in the confines of Castle Greyskull life’s too short to have to put up with this nonsense. So we adjourned elsewhere.
With pubs, like fractured, difficult, relationships, you never go back.
‘Nuff said.
The last minute alternative for the Column lay next door at JR’s American Bar and Grill. As is so often the case it proved to be a fortuitous choice. Bright, narrow but spacious and with a welcome friendly smile from Justine the bar maid that had been missing next door, JR’s is also blessed with large windows looking out onto one of the busiest throughfares in Liverpool.
Here, all human life shambles past so it’s an excellent vantage point for people-watching. So with our extra cold pints of Carlsberg and Guinness we duly took our places to watch the wacky world of Liverpool go by in all its in infinte variety. Surrounded by framed US headlines of yesteryear this was an eminently more suitable place for newspaper men to be.
And, er, friendly too.
“That comes from working for a family and not a chain,” says JR’s affable manager of eight years Gary Meredith who has a strange kind of sympathy for the hard pressed staff working for his neighbours next door.
Maybe I should feel the same - but I know where I’ll be going back to.

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