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What Andrew likes listening to : when he's cycling or when he's driving or when he's sitting in his Executive Office Suite (the Garden Shed) or the Conservatory (where he now has a DAB Radio ipod Tower!).
BBC Radio Nottingham - 25th September 2016 - Andrews Desert Island Discs
The original (working) script went something like this:
1 - Lord of the Rings – Howard Shore – The Fields of the Pelennor – goes back to school days – Mr Griffiths English teacher
2 - Nights in White Satin – Moody Blues (seen them three times and have always loved them) – when working for Leisure Services used to borrow the records
3 - Wouldn’t it be nice - Beach Boys (Anna loves them)
4 - The Lady of my Dream – Vadim (Miami) – stayed in the art deco area and he played one night at the front of the hotel
5 - Danny T and the Blue Crawfish Band – Alons A Lafayette (Zydeco music - New Orleans)
6 - We Shall wear Midnight – Steel eye Span (Terry Pratchett)
7 - Bolero – (Who can forget Torvill & Dean)
8 - Have you ever seen it rain – Creedence Clearwater (saw a tribute band in Florida, in 2007)
The actual John Holmes Show
BBC Radio Nottingham – John Holmes Show – Sunday 25th September 2016
(JH – John Holmes / ACL – Andrew Ludlow)
Intro (Jingle) : John Holmes BBC Radio Nottingham
Goes straight into Creedence Clearwater Revival ‘Proud Mary’
JH - Creedence Clearwater Revival and ‘Proud Mary’ we’ll find out why Andrew Ludlow has suggested that track for a very good reason in a few moments time. But I’m going to find out, you’re going to find out what it’s like to support Notts County through the highs and the lows let’s be honest mainly the lows – you’re still smiling – as we gear up for the Magpies and Reds induction into the Hall of Fame with 50 Days of Football my guest is County supporter Andrew Ludlow and he’s also well known for being a prominent member of the local branch of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale you’re the Secretary aren’t you?
ACL – Yes John that’s right.
JH – When I phoned up Andy, the last time we spoke on the phone, which I think must have been Thursday you said ‘You don’t mind if I come in with a big smile on my face?’ and I said ‘Why?’ and you said ‘Because I’m going to see Notts. County win on Saturday’ and I have to say, I sat on the other end of the phone shaking my head I thought ‘You sad, demented fool’ – they won!
ACL – They did. Every now and again it has to happen. My best friend Paul Hancox was sitting in the pub with me last, yesterday lunch time and saying, ‘they’ve got to win, they must win, they’re bound to win sooner or later at home’ and they did.
JH – And they did and was it a magnificent win?
ACL – The first half is best perhaps not to dwell on but we didn’t concede. The second half was very impressive then we had the sending off but then one of the most amazing goals I’ve seen for many years at Meadow Lane, the third, a stunner I’m sure it’s going to be shown over and over on television
JH – Oh I look forward to seeing that on East Midlands Television, it’ll be on tonight won’t it
ACL – Yes it will, well worth watching it brought the crowd to their feet in amazement it was almost a solo goal the lad from Wolves went past two players drew the goalkeeper and then slotted it in the net. Wonderful.
JH – So you’ve supported Notts County for a long time?
ACL – Yes to a certain extent I can claim a certain amount of fame in that respect because the person who introduced me as much as anyone was a guy called Colin Slater, now I think he’s got something to do with Notts. County …
JH – Yeah ‘the voice of Notts County.’ So, how did that happen?
ACL – Well when I first went to work in Local Government in 1970, I think it was, I was a Junior Clerk and Colin was then, already, the County Information Officer and it was quite amazing as I was being taken around as the Office Junior he came from behind his desk walked across the room and said ‘My name’s Colin’ and from then on I’ve always followed Notts. And been to many many matches.
JH – And it took just that?
ACL – I’d always had the feeling that I was a Notts. Fan because when I was very young I lived in Lady Bay and my two closest friends were Notts fans and everybody else were Forest fans and as I used to walk to school with them I thought I’d say I was a Notts fan but I’d never been to a match. But after meeting Colin I had to go.
JH – So your mum or dad didn’t take you?
ACL – No, they were curiously not interested in football with the exception perhaps of the World Cup in 1966. My mother was not overly impressed with that because we were going on holiday that day and I always remember Dad sort of said ‘Don’t worry, it’s about to finish’ and of course we then had extra time and Mum rushed out of the room in a huff. I actually don’t think she forgave him for two or three days.
JH – Oh dear, so you came to it relatively late then?
ACL – Yes, I think I was eighteen before I went to Meadow Lane but I’ve been a fairly regular ever since.
JH – You have and a big supporter through some of the hard times we might talk about that later.
ACL – Some very hard times.
JH – We also mentioned you’re a but you’re not a founder member of Nottingham CAMRA?
>ACL – It’s not quite true because I missed the very first meeting so I’m a latecomer I actually joined in I think it was September 1973 so I missed the August first meeting.
JH – We’ll talk more about that because the Beer Festival is just around the corner I’m sure we’ll give that a mention and that ‘Proud Mary’ is linked to, with beer isn’t it?
ACL – Yes linked with a couple of occasions, one of our favourite holidays with my wife Anna was to New Orleans and there’s a connection with ‘Proud Mary’ but also
JH – It’s a boat isn’t it?
ACL – Yes that’s right the steamship refers to that and it really brings back wonderful memories of that time. And in 2007 I was invited to Florida to be a beer judge and part of the arrangements they had was that I was guest speaker and after I’d done a speech for about an hour the had a band on and it was a tribute band to Creedence Clearwater Revival and of course they did ‘Proud Mary’ which was wonderful.
JH – And the next track I had a little bit of trouble tracking down which I shouldn’t have had because it’s a well known sound track isn’t it?
ACL – Yes it goes to my love of books and certainly Tolkein has always been my favourite author.
H – I’ve got Howard Shore playing in the background – this is the main titles?
ACL – Yes it’s for ‘Lord of the Rings’ but it just sets everything up so perfectly. When I was a school at Rushcliffe Technical Grammar School we had a teacher, Mr Griffiths the English teacher and I can remember, I think it was early in the second year he actually started reading from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ so we actually had I think 6 or 7 lessons where he did nothing except read parts of the book and I was hooked for life. It was the only time I think I the class when everybody was silent. It was such a wonderful experience and really grabbed me – you just had to start reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
JH – That’s Howard Shore’s main title theme for LOTR I’m not sure which film because I couldn’t work out which one it was.
ACL – I think it’s from the Fellowship of the Ring, it’s the first one of the three
JH – Right OK, excellent, a touch of John Barry there anyway that’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Andrew um nearly said Andrew Oldham, Andrew Ludlow is my guest do you like to be called Andrew or Andy?
ACL – Either goes honestly
JH – We’re now going to talk about CAMRA it’ll be Andy. Now how did you, I’m fascinated, how did you get to be invited, I know that you write in the Nottingham Drinker, but how did you get invited to go to America to give a talk, I mean, how did they hear of you?
ACL – It was pure luck there’s one of the main players in the amateur Beer Society over in America who was living in Florida but her married a lass from Nottingham so he came to a couple of our Branch Meetings in mid 2005/6 and then out of the blue he phoned up to say that they wanted a guest speaker and a Guest of Honour previously they’d had Michael Jackson the Beer Hunter and apparently they wanted someone with a local sort of CAMRA connection so he phoned and said would I like to go over to Florida and spend a week with them all expenses paid and be a Beer Judge and also be the guest of honour and Guest Speaker.
JH – Now when I first went to America having someone talking about Real Ale in America seems like an oxymoron. When I first went to America the game was that people said to me ‘You’re not gonna like it all that fizzy lager, all that weak fizzy lager and I don’t think I ever had a Budweiser once. Because, not having a go, well yes I am, actually all those Coor’s or whatever they’re called all that stuff, I managed to find tasty beer but it was a bloomin’ hard job. Now it’s changed a lot hasn’t it?
ACL – Oh the scenes completely different um in an odd way in some respects it’s actually been built on the back of the amateurs because back in 2007/8 that sort of period the amateurs were really pushing it hard. Um some of their flavoured beers, after all, some of the beers that I was judging, were things like Chilli flavoured beer which actually wasn’t terribly good but when you mixed it with a chocolate flavoured beer you actually got an incredible tasting beer. And the strengths varied from a relatively low right the way up to the 12 per centers.
JH – 12 %?
ACL – Oh yeah, if you know what you’re doing you can in fact get a really good high quality tasteful product but you really do have to know what you are doing.
JH – Yeah. Treat it with respect that’s I mean that’s a wine.
ACL – It’s sipping beer definitely.
JH – Definitely sipping beer. So I remember going over and I think it was at the bottom of the Empire State Building and there was decent beer being served there. And one of them was Pale Rider …
ACL – All the way from Yorkshire
JH – Well somebody’d tasted it in Yorkshire and had decided they were going to replicate the recipe and it had the Pale Rider logo
ACL – It’s strange that they do that a little bit, one of the Breweries in Florida brews a Ringwood 49-er version um and I’ve actually tried it over there and it is very good. Um they do seem to have sort of cottoned on to what we do well but then they’ve added to it as well.
JH – Ringwood’s a brewery just north of Bournemouth isn’t it?
ACL – Yes that’s right.
JH – So why did you get involved with CAMRA? I mean, let’s be honest, I’m looking at you, you haven’t got a big beer gut,
ACL – It’s the cycling that helps that keeps that down, I think I was drawn to it almost in error um I didn’t know a lot about beer but what I did notice very early on is that when you followed Notts you used to go to different pubs and that sometimes you’d go into a pub and the beer was all fizzy and unpleasant and at other times it wasn’t. Um and it was after a while somebody pointed out to me that the reason was that some were cask beers and those were the ones that were full of flavour and the keg beers were the fizzy ones. And then I got involved with Nottingham CAMRA and started to realise that with The Good Beer Guide and things like that you could not only go to away matches but have some decent beer.
JH – The Good Beer Guide, yeah very good. The thing that fascinated me in my early days of having a drink, I mean I was always Watney’s Red Barrel, Double Diamond, Worthington E and I thought they were all right and then actually the best keg beer I thought was Home Star 5, Home Brewery 5 Star.
ACL – Now you see I always found all of those, and I’ve tried them in the past, all were just too fizzy and it distorted the taste. Certainly in those days the old keg beers were always beers that were pasteurised, filtered and effectively killed off so the only way they got any life was pumping CO2 into them so you got this beautifully bright beer but was often chilled to hide and mask the fact there was limited flavour and they were just far too gassy for me.
JH – So you know when Home Brewery, I’m going right back now before you were born, no not really, no it wasn’t before you were born but, no it wasn’t, um they used to deliver it by tanker
ACL – Ah yes
JH – I always looked on that as being real ale but it can’t have been if it was delivered by tanker
ACL – No
JH – To young people that literally what happened that a petrol-type tanker came outside the door and they’d bang it into a great big drum in the pub.
ACL – Yes unfortunately tank delivery became quite a popular way of delivering beer – as much as anything what happened to the industry that they discovered that landlords weren’t looking after the beer as well as they should so they found a way of cutting out the skill required and a lot of that was to go over to keg beer. Keg tank beer, green beer, things of that sort that didn’t require much skill. Oddly enough the quality of the product generally was average but it never reached the highs of Real Ale. So you had this sort of revolution when people eventually said, just like white bread, they suddenly said, well actually I think I’d prefer something a bit better than that and I think the industry took a long while to cotton on and yet now you look around and you have hundreds and hundreds of micro-breweries all over the place.
JH – Nottinghamshire’s amazing.
ACL – There’s something like 60-odd in Nottinghamshire
JH – There’s not? 60?
ACL – Within 20 miles of this radio station there’s, I think, 64 micro-breweries. The explosion there’s, I think two more came on the scene in the last month, the number is still increasing.
JH – That’s staggering.
ACL – You see it is amazing because they are all different as well.
JH – I interviewed a bloke from Bass as Coor’s were taking it over and I said why are you getting rid of Bass and he said there’s no future in it at all and I said you might be wrong he said listen we’re talking about nothing! These little breweries they’ll be there, they’ll make a living but they’re not going to take us on at all.
ACL – In London it used to be a joke because Young’s Brewery of Wandsworth, in those days, they were the ones that really stood proud and kept the tradition of real ale going and yet you had people in the Watney’s pubs and they used to joke that everytime they saw they’d say a hearse go by ‘there goes another Young’s drinker’.
JH – (Laughs) Nice one! So to the people that aren’t interested in beer I promise we’re not going to talk about beer all the time. Um we’re going to have to talk some about Andy as well. But unfortunately the next thing is linked with a Trappist brewery isn’t it?
ACL – Yes it is and oddly enough my honeymoon.
JH – Oh right, ok – so it was when you went to a Trappist brewery with Anna?
ACL – Doesn’t everybody do that? Yes I think Anna was a little surprised when we went off to France, we had our wedding reception at the Lincolnshire Poacher and then the following day we drove to France and we had a second reception in a small town called Fourmies on the French/Belgian border and just round the corner by chance happened to be the Chimay Trappist Brewery so one had to spend some time there.
JH – And here’s Mike Oldfield. 'To France' Mike Oldfield and Maggie Reilly
JH - ‘To France’ Mike Oldfield and Maggie Reilly. That was for Andrew Ludlow and Anna and their honeymoon, we’ll play that for Anna shall we? Yes, right now um born in Nottingham?
ACL – Yes, yes
JH – And which schools did you go to?
ACL – I went to Lady Bay Infants and Junior. I managed to fail the 11+ so went to the Luttrell but then passed the 12+ and so went to Rushcliffe Technical Grammar.
JH – Ah right so that’s how that happened then.
ACL – Yes it’s interesting of course with the debate over grammar schools and things of that going on at the moment they even in my day if you didn’t get passed the 11+ there was always a sort of second chance and I was fortunate enough to move over to Rushcliffe Technical Grammar.
JH – Which pleased you?
ACL – Yes because unfortunately in those days if you stayed at the Luttrell you could only do CSEs and when you got to the technical grammar school you could do GCEs and it gave you that difference in status.
JH – What effect did it have when you, I hate this term fail, because that’s the way our parents portrayed it and I blame them quite a lot for this, but when you say failed the 11+ what effect did it have on you?
ACL – It was quite devastating I will admit, I made the simple mistake of not following the guidance. Nowadays sort of in particular they stress, before you start your exam paper, read the question.
JH – Yes
ACL – Unfortunately I didn’t (SFX - tittering in background) and the first question was on English and you had to put words into a sentence and I spent about 40 minutes thinking of appropriate words and then right underneath there was a list of words you were supposed to put in and at that point I just panicked. Um – total fail.
JH – Well I did something which I’d never really done before I got a thing I had to assemble, it was only a hub thing, you know for broadband, and they gave me a list of parts and they gave me instructions and I read them before I started. (SFX Laughter)
ACL – It is always a useful thing to do and I have now learned to do that after my 11+ experience.
JH – So you left school, college and then where’d you go?
ACL – I had a year working for I was going to say NatWest but in fact when I was there it was called the Westminster Bank and I worked there for a year and then after a year I got a job in the Clerk’s Office at Notts County Council at County Hall. That’s where I met Colin.
JH – Colin Slater, yes, yes
ACL – And from there onto Leisure Services and then 20-odd years working at Police Headquarters at Sherwood Lodge.
JH – Oh, I didn’t know you did Police Headquarters as well.
ACL – Yes, it was rather an interesting time because it was just at the start of the mining dispute so I joined the Force as a member of the Support Staff worked through the two years effectively of that and was at the Police Headquarters for about 20 years.
JH – Those were terrible times.
ACL – They were, it was a horrible time, the Police, I think, got caught very much in the middle, but their view was, very much, that as the Nottinghamshire Miners generally had made the decision that they wished to continue to work until they were given a democratic right to vote then the Police were going to try to support them. But we did have huge problems in Nottinghamshire, the Force ended up, I think when I was there, we were something like 2,200 officers and at times during the dispute they had officers brought into the county and we were sometimes over 6,000.
JH – It’s very easy, gosh that’s huge numbers and it’s very easy to partition to blame other people if but the problem started when we started importing police from outside didn’t it?
ACL – It did.
JH – Because they didn’t have the same empathy with the Notts Miners at all or did they?
ACL – I think the biggest problem without a shadow of a doubt was The Met when you saw the difference we I think we flew in officers from Portsmouth and Southampton and I can always remember looking out of my window at Sherwood Lodge and they got off the bus and they all were beautifully positioned in a line they stood to attention and actually marched all the way into Sherwood Lodge and went into the Canteen. The Met arrived, sadly half of them hadn’t got ties on, they sort of wandered in as a mess and they just were completely dishevelled they were not impressive and sadly they didn’t understand policing in Nottinghamshire at all.
JH – That’s not the first time, that, well it’s probably the first time but it won’t be the last time that happens I mean when you look back Police were actually waving £20 notes at the miners to goad them, I mean that’s just evil!
ACL – It is and I fear that was the outsiders because the other side of this story that is often just not told was that a lot of the police officers because they had to spend sort of 8 hours 10 hours in a minibus they would be given a packed lunch and vast numbers of them when the end of shifts came at various pits they would actually go out and take their packed lunches and would hand them to the children of striking miners and say please take this because we know that you’re struggling.
JH – That’s the other side.
ACL – Exactly.
JH – There’s a play that’s just opened, "Darkness Darkness" at the Playhouse, it hasn’t opened yet, that’s John Harvey’s book have you read John Harvey’s book?
ACL – No but I would like to see that.
JH – The play is called "Darkness Darkness" at the Playhouse and it is set, this is Resnick the last of his Resnick novels now and it’s set in Nottingham, Resnick’s going up and down Upper Parliament Street and visiting all the collieries and it’s all set at that time, when a murder takes place
ACL – Well we nearly had one at Sherwood Lodge because I remember we had all the vehicles parked in Gedling Car Park just outside the Sherwood Lodge itself and one day they discovered that someone had loosened a large number of the wingnuts on the wheels.
JH – I remember that.
ACL – Just sufficiently so that when you started driving they would come off.
JH – I remember that.
ACL – And that was obviously done overnight.
JH – I remember I was working on the breakfast show in those days.
ACL – Very worrying times.
JH – Let’s lighten this, although this is just as serious, we’ll dedicate this to the Beer Festival shall we? Sort of? You can tell me about it afterwards.
ACL – Yes it’s safer probably.
JH – Slim Dusty ‘The Pub with no beer’ – You don’t get songs** in the charts now that are humorous do you?
ACL – It’s a sad thing they don’t. I’ve always loved that one but it does have connections to Beer Festivals.
JH – Tell me a bit more. Unburden yourself.
ACL – oh dear, well I not only get involved with the Nottingham one but also Hucknall and a couple of times at Hucknall we have ran out of beer but that fortunately we’ve corrected that so we haven’t recently but it’s always been a bit of a standing joke I think that in 19 eighty something Nottingham got very close. We only had 8 pints left it really got that bad but in Nottingham now we always ensure we have plenty of beer left in fact last year we had over 120 beers on when we shut so it’s part of our new policy ‘Nottingham you’ll never have to listen to “A Pub with no beer”’
JH – What do you do with the old beer then?
ACL – You’re not going to like this, but we are on grass and we just simply turn the taps on
JH – No, no
ACL – Sorry, yes, there’s nothing else we can do with it, you can’t move it, it’s real ale, it has to go
JH – Noooo - I come from the war generation ‘Waste not want not’
ACL – Please come down on Sunday, we’ll look after you.
JH – So how’s it going, the Festival, obviously it’s just round the corner now isn’t it?
ACL – It is, Steve Westby and his team are working flat out ordering beer, I saw him briefly at the match yesterday and he was telling me he’d got Harvey’s and few other unusual beers that we don’t normally have. I think he’s working on 11-1200 beers plus of course about 2-300 ciders.
JH – You’re joking!
ACL – The really difficult thing is for the cellar team, we have to go round trying them all to make sure they are all all right
JH – Tough, tough job
ACL – You see it’s a hard life but someone has to do it.
JH – Andy Ludlow is my guest, he’s a Notts County supporter and a CAMRA member as well, the next track takes us back to your wife again doesn’t it?
ACL – Yes a lot of the music goes back to connections to Anna, she is without doubt the most important person in my life and without her I’m not sure what I’d ever do, she sort of supports me, constantly repairs the computer and generally looks after me.
JH – So this one’s for her as well?
ACL – Indeed yes.
JH – Lovely track as well. I’ve never heard this released as a single – exquisite, it’s Lindisfarne
JH - I think that came from their first album Lady Eleanor, Clear White Light was also which is a nice track – and Lindisfarne they were in Newark last night. Palace Theatre Newark good stuff at the Palace Theatre**. So there you are that was Lindisfarne, Andy Ludlow is my guest, You keep mentioning Anna, how did you meet her then?
ACL – Ah now, there’s an interesting story.
JH – Good.
ACL – It was whilst I was at Police HQ and she was working in Personnel and I made this mistake of contacting them to say that I needed a temporary member of staff for the typing pool and I said can I have the person in three days time and she initially said they could sort something out and then she said why do you need to have a replacement and I said oh well the person leaving is going on maternity leave to which I then got this fairly strong message had I thought of forward planning? I must have noticed that my member of staff was going to be going on maternity leave and waiting until three days beforehand wasn’t very good.
JH – Yes, it’s a fair point.
ACL – Yes it was a fair point I had actually asked them previously on every month for about three months and in fairness Anna had only just joined the Police and it just showed how brilliant she was that on the day in question when I needed someone she duly found someone and they were brilliant.
JH – Oh, that’s brilliant – so what did you do at County Hall by the way? What was your job there?
ACL – I started off in Administration and then worked in Personnel so I sort of moved around a little.
JH – Yes, so there we are you see you worked in Personnel but when it came to the boot being on the other foot ….
ACL – Yes I know, it was really strange because it was an odd way of being introduced but I think there was a spark even at that stage. And then we got to know each other and finally tied the knot,
JH – Oh that’s lovely – Beatles?
ACL – Yes, it has to be doesn’t it?
JH – I suppose so, is this, I remember when this first came out smiling to myself, now I’m no longer smiling!
ACL – You see I can still get away with this on the grounds that I’m only 63 it seemed only appropriate that I should have this track from the Beatles.
JH – The Beatles ‘When I’m 64’ and Andrew Ludlow is my guest and very soon I’ll have to put that in the past tense. Right, so, Notts. County – I’ve bumped into you in various places and it’s always Notts. County that seems to be on your mind I remember I bumping into you in some pub somewhere and it was when Notts didn’t have an owner and you seemed to be working quite vociferously behind the scenes.
ACL – Yes, I’ve been involved with a couple of the organisations that have tried to assist Notts, SNAG, The Supporters Trust all sorts of organisations I’ve assisted them but there have been other people who have done the main work but certainly my love for Notts. Has goes back several years and I’ve feared for their survival on more that one occasion.
JH – Well I mean and that was going quite close recently?
ACL – Oh yes two of three times, I remember when Colin Slater did the rallying call when we set up the life line after all I was there at that time and Jimmy Sirrell was there and signed up on that night at the Astoria, I’ve still have my number 0063 and still hoping it will come up as a winner some day.
JH – (Laughs) has it never come up?
ACL – In fairness I have actually won £1000 twice.
JH – Have you?
ACL – So I can’t complain too much.
JH – How many players did you buy with that? Sounds like a forest of questions doesn’t it?
ACL – I was going to say that in some of the seasons I could have bought half the team with that.
JH – What’s your favourite games?
ACL – Oh, I’m with Colin Slater on this, I think my three favourite games have got to be beating Leeds in the Cup, watching them at Chelsea when we got promotion and then recently, well what a magic evening it was, to be in Turin and watch them play …
JH – You went there did you?
ACL – Oh yes I really have to thank friends who made the arrangements but I then had travel difficulties because by the time I worked out that I was going I couldn’t actually get a flight so I went by EuroStar, crossed stations in Paris and then took the Milan special so I think it took 18 hours from Hucknall Railway Station to actually get me to Turin.
JH – That’s dedication, for those that don’t know why you were going to Turin could you just very briefly explain Notts. County’s connection?
ACL – Notts. County’s connection with Juventus goes back many years and basically they lent or gave the black and white stripes to Juventus and Juventus apparently made it slightly more famous than the Notts County ones but it was a lovely moment because when Juventus moved into their own purpose built stadium instead of inviting Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United or one of the greats they invited their old friends from Nottingham. Notts County were there.
JH – That’s a lovely story isn’t it.
ACL – It was a fantastic experience to be in the crowd and hear in the crowd of 40 odd thousand the cry of ‘Come on you pies!’
JH – I’m just going to throw this at you, no I’m not going to ask the question about the future of CAMRA.
ACL – It’s an interesting one I think the future’s still good a lot of people think it’s finished …
JH – The job’s been done.
ACL – But it hasn’t I think the danger is that you become complacent and if you become complacent then there’s the danger that Real Ale could go into a decline in the future so there is still a place for CAMRA, there’s a place of craft beers, there’s a place in the future and we are now very much a pressure group now campaigning not on beer alone but pubs as well.
JH – Why do you want Alice Cooper to finish with?
ACL – Well it goes to my part time job, for the past 13 years I’ve worked as a Clerk to School Governing Bodies, you could not meet a nice bunch of people. I can’t believe that there are so many people that want to be school governors to volunteer to do such a difficult job and that they all do it with a smile on their face they do it in a spirit of camaraderie and I thought it would be rather nice to finish with ‘School’s Out’ for them.
JH – ‘School’s Out’ says Alice Cooper. My thanks to Andy/Andrew Ludlow thank you for coming in.
ACL – Thank you
JH – Come on Rodney you’ve got to take over from that ………..
** Lyrics
"A Pub With No Beer"
Oh it's-a lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night, we'll hear the wild dingoes call
But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
And there's a faraway look on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
Oh, what a terrible place is a pub with no beer
Then the stockman rides up with his dry dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar and pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
As the barman says sadly, "The pub's got no beer"
Then the swaggie comes in, smothered in dust and flies
He throws down his roll and rubs the sweat from his eyes
But when he is told, he says, "What's this I hear?
I've trudged fifty flamin' miles to a pub with no beer"
Now there's a dog on the v'randa, for his master, he waits
But the boss is inside, drinking wine with his mates
He hurries for cover and he cringes in fear
It's no place for a dog 'round a pub with no beer
And old Billy the blacksmith, the first time in his life
Why he's gone home cold sober to his darling wife
He walks in the kitchen, she says, "You're early, Bill dear"
But then he breaks down and tells her the pub's got no beer
Oh, it's hard to believe that there's customers still
But the money's still tinkling in the old ancient till
The wine buffs are happy and I know they're sincere
When they say they don't care if the pub's got no beer
So it's-a lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night, we'll hear the wild dingoes call
But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear
** Spooky or what? (OK Coincidences are Signposts and all that - but to mention my ex's favourite group at his former/present place of work? Sharp intake of breath here!)
Page refreshed : 16th November 2016