Drink

We all have secrets which, when we remember them, shroud us in shame. I’m afraid I have a particularly dark one that I’m forced to remember almost every day of my life. Twenty years ago, I was a working in a big London ad agency with a smart and ambitious young man named Richard Reed. I liked him a lot and it was clear that he wouldn’t be constrained by the advertising industry forever. Sure enough, he came to me one day and announced that he and some friends were starting a business, making fruit smoothies called ‘Fast Tractor’. Richard explained that they’d chosen Fast Tractor because the tractor that

Good beer in good company. What could be better? But, as delightful and simple as that scenario is, it’s phenomenally easy to bugger up a good pub. There’s less agreement, however, about what the perfect pub should look like. Back in 1946, George Orwell set out in his classic article, The Moon Under Water, 10 essential features of his ideal pub: since he knew of nowhere that satisfied all of them, his Moon Under Water had to be a wonderful fiction. Some 70 years down the line, many pubs in search of perfection are fiddling with minute details or pointless frippery. For me, once the basics are sorted, it’s all