Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: A Manual for the British Malcontent - David Quantick - Страница 12

Ever been to Ireland? Some of the pubs are lovely, but a lot of them are, in fact, concrete sheds that smell of damp and bad furniture. Lots of them look like quiet British country pubs. Quite a few are modern and trendy with lots of shiny metal. And until recently very few of them had any of the following in them:

1) Vintage Guinness posters

2) Old road signs saying DUBLIN 43 MILES

3) Green neon signs in the shape of shamrocks

4) Lager

5) 2 different kinds of Irish whiskey

6) A jukebox stacked with the complete works of The Pogues (from London) and The Waterboys (from Scotland)

7) The entire contents of a provincial Irish grocer’s shop or sub post office, circa 1956

8) A signed photograph of U2

9) A lunch menu that offers a choice of soda bread or mussels

10) Toilets with signs in Gaelic

And yet this is the old toot that passes for Irish authenticity in your average faux Irish pub. Around the world, from Chile to Moscow, from Nepal to Tierra Del Fuego, the fake Irish bar has spread, along with all the other vexing drivel of fake Paddywhackery. Designed to appeal to the same kind of cultural illiterate who thinks Scotland is in Wales, the Faux Irish bar is like some sick prop out of a brewer’s idea of Westworld, where animatronic farm labourers drink CGI pints of Guinness and sing The Men Behind The Wire to an mp3 accompaniment of Uilleann pipes and bodhrans.

Still, we should be grateful that the world’s most popular theme bar is not the ‘Essex Pub’. Dear God.