NewsBiscuit

Retro Inns, a new chain of theme pubs, was launched this week with the aim of recreating the local of yesteryear.

‘The TGI’s and All Bar Ones of today, with their smart interiors and extensive menus, mean that high street drinking has lost its edge’ said Retro Inns founder Jamie Hedderman. We want to take our customers back to the local boozers of the 1970s; dangerous town-centre pubs where you drank rubbish beer and then got beaten up.’

All Retro Inns feature a large, dark car park for urinating or fighting. Inside, a bleary-eyed local sits up at the bar with a packet of Players’ No 6 jammed in his T shirt sleeve. As you take your place on the ripped leatherette seats, a noisy fruit machine will pay out a jackpot right next to your ear. If he ever finishes playing pool, the hostile and alcoholic landlord will slam down a slightly short pint of keg beer for you, while his Alsatian puts its paws up on the bar and barks in your face. Or why not try tutting at the tattooed skinhead who stubbed out a cigarette on the ashtray on your table without asking.

The attention to detail even extends to the smelly toilets where a novelty condom machine for a dubious brand you have never heard of keeps your money and then jams. Above the urinals advertising opportunities have not been overlooked; on the wall are simplistic drawings of male sexual organs with telephone numbers scrawled underneath.

‘We want to put the excitement back into a Friday night drinking. That edge-of-the-seat feeling that you could get your head kicked in at any moment’ chuckled Mr Hedderman. ‘At Retro Inns serious drinkers can have a night out that they’ll really remember – at least they would have done if they hadn’t drunk so much and then been knocked unconscious in the pub car park!’

However critics of Retro Inns have claimed that not everything in the pubs was authentic 1970’s. ‘The meat pies being kept warm in the glass case only date back to January’ said one rival.

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Posted: Oct 18th, 2006 by NewsBiscuit