LUSH LIFE | July 29th 2008

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Pubs are Britain's national pastime, writes a Britain correspondent for The Economist. Three-quarters of the population indulge. But given the sticky tables, bad food and fragrant toilets, what's the draw?

Every nation needs a national myth, and Britain might seem to need more than most. A modern myth has it as a country full of overworked wage-slaves. Newspapers write of a "long-hours culture", and point out that the British working week is significantly longer than the European average.

Yet walking through the afternoon streets of St James, on my way back from Friday lunch, it is hard to see much evidence of that. A legion of investment bankers and private-equity types crowd the streets, as indistinguishable from one to the next, in their open-necked shirts and luxuriantly coifed hair, as their predecessors were in their umbrellas and bowler hats. They are the overspill from London's pubs, which have been filling up since mid-day. Now it seems as if half the city is outside, pint-glass in one hand and cigarette in the other, chatting up a co-worker or arguing about football. London must be the only city in the world where the journalists work harder than the bankers.

Pubs are Britain's national pastime. Three-quarters of the population indulge and a third consider themselves regulars, far higher proportions than are claimed by any of the country's religions--football included. And they are unique to the British Isles. The Germans have beer-halls, the French have cafes and most other societies have bars, but only in Britain and Ireland can you find pubs. There are procedural differences (there is no table service at pubs, something that causes endless confusion for tourists) as well as different pastimes once you arrive (it is hard to imagine sophisticates in a Parisian bar playing darts or Scrabble). But what really sets a public house apart from its foreign counterparts is the conceit that it is not a place of business, but a part of a person's home that is open to anyone.

In 1946, George Orwell, perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, wrote an essay describing the ideal pub, which he named the Moon Under Water, and the qualities that made it special. Many of these remain recognisable to modern readers: the architecture, he said, was uncompromisingly Victorian, infused with the "comfortable ugliness" of the 19th century. It was busy, but not noisy, with a merry atmosphere but not a drunken one. There was a fireplace for the winter and a beer garden for the summer; the barmaids were friendly and most of the clientele were regulars.

Not everything would be so familiar, were Orwell to visit a pub today. There was no dinner served at the Moon Under Water. Today, virtually every pub in the land advertises "traditional pub food", and an evening trip to the pub for a meal has become a classic family evening out--a "tradition" no more than a decade or two old. The Moon was unusual in that it offered draught stout; if there is a pub in Britain today that doesn't serve Guinness, I have never found it. Orwell reserved a snooty disdain for glasses without handles, preferring to drink his beer from pewter mugs. One can only imagine his reaction to the plastic cups that are becoming common in town-centre pubs now.

Still, most modern pubs try to replicate Orwell's formula, knowingly or not, some more successfully than others. One example of what not to do can be found at my local, a mid-sized pub which shall remain nameless, in a nondescript part of north London. It is owned by J.D. Wetherspoon, a large firm that has built its success on following Orwell's criteria (one of its flagship pubs is even called the Moon Under Water, though Orwell's essay reveals that the pub it describes did not actually exist).

First impressions are good. The dark, wood-panelled walls look suitably Victorian, and there is a nice mix of tables and booths. A pair of high-backed red leather armchairs, seemingly salvaged from the Reform club from the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, occupy pride of place in front of the fire. The walls in one corner are covered with bookshelves, suggesting the kind of place where one can while away a few hours reading quietly.

As soon as you sit down, those good impressions start to go sour. The tables are sticky with half-dried beer. There is a wide range of beers to choose from, but often it tastes as if the pipes have not been cleaned for weeks. The food is cheap because it comes pre-made in plastic sachets and is reheated in a microwave--that is, assuming the overworked staff can remember your order. Until smoking was banned from pubs in 2007, the front half of this Wetherspoonerism stank of cigarettes while the back half was suffused with a smell from the toilets. After three disappointing trips I swore never to return, a promise that I break now only in the interests of journalistic inquiry. Sadly, the tables are as sticky as ever and, while the cigarette smoke has gone, that has only allowed the toilets' odour to pervade the entire place.

(This column is part of a correspondent's diary on Pubs in Britain, published on Economist.com)