Trouble is, Mick, for the last few years the marketing people have been ruining perfectly good traditional English pubs and turning them into "Plastic Paddy" pubs, which bear as much resemblance to Ireland as the Pyramids do. Bar staff with emerald green waistcoats and bowlers (derbys?), Foster & Allan or Daniel O'Donnell on the PA, "traditional Irish" (microwave) food, etc.

So we're getting the worst of both worlds. But someone must be buying this crap, or they wouldn't spend millions on "improving" their pubs in this way. Having sat in real English pubs and Irish bars listening to real people doing their own traditional thing, this marketing shite really gets up my nose.