Life on Mars

I'm still watching (and enjoying) Life on Mars on BBC1 on Monday nights, but becoming increasingly doubtful that boozers in Manchester in 1973 would 1) have had so many hand pumps on the bar and 2) would have been offering real ales from other parts of the country like Greene King IPA and Charles Wells bitter.

I was in London at the time, and I'm sure it was the late 70s when Greene King beers first appeared (I think at the station bar at Liverpool Street).

Are there any Mancs of a certain age that can verify that their city was in advance of the capital in carrying forward the CAMRA crusade? As far as I remember, 1973 was the height of the (Watney's) "Red Revolution"!

Reply to
davy_rogers
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... love annoying the wife by pointing out all the beer-related inconsistencies. The GK IPA and Theakstons Best Bitter clips are clearly

21st Century and the Stones and Greenall's clips were from the 90's. However, the Wells clip did actually look fairly old.

In the mid-70's Manchester was dominated by the big brewers - Wilsons, Chesters/Whitbread, Bass and the local regionals. If you got cask beer in an ordinary back street pub it would more likely be on an electric pump - with any handpulls being redundant. Certainly out-of-area beers were very rare.

Liked the air-con units and satellite dishes as well ;-)

Mark Enderby

Reply to
Mark Enderby

Hi

I have not got round to watching the last couple of episodes yet, but if he really is in an accident induced coma and dreaming the entire thing, then the above points are irrelevent.

Certainly my own dreams are never entirely consistent - although sometimes interesting; especially after eating a cheese sandwich followed by a couple of Ibroprofen tablets washed down with a few pints of strong homewbrew when my mild athritis is playing up!!!!

Regards KGB

Reply to
KGB

I moved to Salford in the mid 70s and I recall there being lots of Wilson's, Greenalls, Tetley, Boddingtons and Robinson's pubs. Some were electric pump, some handpull.

Reply to
gavin

In Warrington in those days most Greenalls was delivered by tanker into large plastic bags inside a stainless square vessel. Air was pumped around the bag to squeeze the beer into the pumps. The pumps were a seal moved by beer pressure inside a horizontal glass tube. Great fun when the glass tube broke! The udes bags were useful as they could be cut open, hosed down & used to keep things dry outside.

Reply to
Dave Croft

And a high proportion of pubs serving real ale would have had unmarked pumps (whether hand or electric).

It's very rare to see that now.

Reply to
PeterE

What I noticed in the last episode, was they said chucking out time was

11:30.

Surely, then it was 10:30 last orders, and 10 mins drinking up time.

Dave Clarke

Reply to
David Wilson Clarke

Very variable. Not just on a city/town basis but right down to specific pubs. The legacy of various early and late licence variants meant you could start drinking in one pub at 10 am and finish in another at or about midnight. The situation became even more extreme when you took in pubs near markets.

The fun part was always finding places you could drink mid-afternoon without being hassled by amateur drinkers.:-)

Reply to
Steven Pampling

True, but the vast majority of London pubs would have closed at 10:30 or 11:00 depending on the borough. And yes, 10 minutes drinking up time.

Best regards, Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

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Reply to
Paul Sherwin

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