Pints with Nige
The billionaire's choice for PM drops into my local
Oh god, Nigel’s at the bar. And he’s got some new friends with him. He hasn’t seen us, let’s just go.
No, Inner Voice. I’m not leaving my favourite boozer just because that old gobshite is here. We can do this.
On your head be it, Holmes. You wanted a quiet drink.
If you keep schtum and don’t get drawn it could still be a quiet drink.
Tim is already pouring me a pint of numbers1 as I approach the bar. All I need from a boozer is this sort of low grade care. A foghorn bray cuts through my reverie.
“Lewis! How are you?”
Shit.
“Hi, Nigel. Not bad. How are you?”
“Well,” he says, breathing out a warm fug of Bishop’s Finger. “It’s not been a great day really, now has it?”
Always with the rhetorical questions. Have you noticed how often he does it?
Yes, he does it all the time. Now shut up, Inner Voice.
“Why’s that?”
“Well! I think we both know why that is!”
Does he ever just answer a fucking question? I’m having him tonight. This bullshit has got to top.
Please don’t.
“Sorry, Nige. I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
He leans in. The miasma envelops me.
“Well it hasn’t been a good day… For Kemi Badenoch, of course!”
He brays that laugh; the one dripping with insincere bonhomie, the one that makes it clear you aren’t actually in on his joke.
“I don’t get it, Nige.”
“Because the Tories are dying!”
Right, that’s it. I’m going in.
No, Inner Voice. Please.
Too late big man, I’ve already got control.
“I mean, we can hope. Especially after the last decade and a half. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t get why you’ve got so many of these fucking failures in here with you.
“I see Zahawi nursing an Appletiser hoping no one notices him, and little Bobby Jenrick is over there with his Babycham in a sippy cup, trying to debate the fruit machine. I can’t see any Savvy B in the fridge at all, so I’ll bet you a packet of scratchings that Nadine is having a kip in a corner somewhere.
“You mooch in here once a fucking week without fail, pissing and moaning about how the boozer is broken and only you can fix it. So, why are you hanging out with the chancers who did the damage? We managed to get them all barred.”
Bobby J stops scowling at two cherries and a banana and scowls at me instead. “The pub is bwoken!” he squeaks.
I’m not in the mood for his bullshit today. I quite liked it when he was a skulking irrelevant hanging around the train station.
“You broke it, Jenrick, you fucking dope.”
Robert Ozempic recoils, like a dog seeing a frog for the first time. “No I didn’t. The Tories did.”
“Five minutes ago you were sat over there with Kemi Badenoch, you fucking fud. I saw you flip the table over when she sent you to the bar. You’ve just run outside, changed your jacket and run back inside again. You’re not getting your tummy tickled by your mates at closing time now, you’re in here talking to real people. You try to lie to my face again and I’ll take you outside.”
Robert Generic gulps. This is a man not used to being robustly challenged. More people should probably do it.
“You literally broke the pub, idiot. It was your idea to turn this place into a B&B, you ruined the décor, and you made sure that a billionaire pornographer got to redo the bogs for his own good, not for ours. Now sit down and shut up.”
Nigel steps in, his man of the people schtick slipped on like a Kabuki mask.
“Lewis, we’re acting in the best interests of the pub. We’re getting ready to run the pub, we need people who know the pub.”
“Nige, Zahawi tried to dodge his bar tab last time. He even told poor old Tim that he had paid it and there was nothing to see here. He’s not good for the pub.”
Zahawi stops chewing his straw and looks up. “I’m ready to put my shoulder to the wheel for the pub.”
I want to claw my own face off.
“Those are meaningless words, Nads Two.”
“Nads Two?”
“Yes, Dorries waltzed back in here first, so she’s Nads One. You pair of nads want to help the pub? Pay your fucking tab like the rest of us.”
Big Dick Tice (it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means, but he’s so up himself he’d fellate his own reflection) wanders over with a Moet. I didn’t even know Tim stocked Moet.
“Lewis, we care deeply about the pub. The pub has been run badly for far too long.”
Dick’s Dubai tan is so deep he looks like he’s been dipped in gravy.
“You’re never here, Richard! You’re either sunning it up or trying to get on telly.”
Tice starts muttering something about me being a left-wing elitist shill rather than someone simply having a pint in his local.
Jenrick shrieks suddenly, a high warble like a cat fight at midnight.
“What is it, Robert?” Nigel asks. He seems quite annoyed by Jenrick’s attempt to get attention.
“Brown!” Jenrick yelps, pointing at the window. “Brown!”
Farage clocks the nightmarish visage glaring through the window, tuts and rolls his eyes. Little Bobby J was supposed to sit quietly in the corner. Especially after the Dulwich affair. “That’s just Suella, Robert. She may be joining us soon.”
My eyes bulge, unbelieving. “Another one, Nige? It doesn’t make sense. You can’t be a breath of fresh air if you’ve got so many proven failures clinging onto your coattails. You’re Trigger’s Broom, mate. And you, Tice Tice Baby, said you wanted to wipe the Tories out. I didn’t realise you meant by assimilation, like The Thing wiping out humanity.”
Dicky Poos snarls about how I should get out of my Westminster bubble. No, that’s not our nickname for the snug - I really don’t know what he’s on about. I ignore the monkey and turn back to the organ grinder.
“Nige, I just don’t get how this is going to work. Danny Kruger is sat in a booth over there banging on about Christian values, when less than half the pub is Christian. Lee Anderson is trying to start a fight with the pub cat. Look at Gullis and Ben Bradley, they’re reading a fucking beer mat. Andrea Jenkyns legit hates the regulars. These are all fuck ups, Nigel. I really don’t see how even you think you can blag that these are serious people.”
Farage leans in close, the jovial Kabuki mask suddenly set aside. He’s dead serious. Tice appears like a ghoul on my other side, slipping an arm around me and offering me some Dubai chocolate as Nigel speaks.
“Lewis, no one cares except you. All those things happened ages ago. There’s been three seasons of The Masked Singer to scour the memories of your fellow patrons clean. The pub has forgotten all of it. Donald from the other side of the duck pond is about to smash the entire pub to bits. I can stop that. I can keep the pub safe.”
“Nah, I’m not having that.” I say. “I’ve got socks that are older than Jenrick’s list of misdemeanours. And as for Donald, you love him. I’ve seen you at his barbeques. You’re obsessed with him, just like he’s obsessed with that weird Russian lad who’s hated us all for years. You’d probably let them both in the pub without a question asked.”
“Lewis,” Nige smiles. It doesn’t touch his eyes. “I promised we’d get Sky installed. Never happened. I promised a pool table, and a pub quiz. Never delivered either of them. I promised late night opening and Tim still kicks you all out at 11:30. I did get us out of Pub Watch though.”
“Yeah, and it’s all gone downhill ever since.”
Nige waves it away.
“What you need to understand,” he says. “Is that I would sell this whole pub to Big Don in a heartbeat. I’ll still get my pints.”
“Hang on a sec. What about the rest of us?”
“Your. Pints. Don’t. Matter.” He prods me in the chest to emphasis each word.
“I’ll tell everyone. I’ll make sure everyone knows what you’re really up to. Some of us have drunk here our whole lives, this place is our home.”
Tice grins an alligator leer. Isabel Oakeshott has appeared on his arm like a haunted doll. “You can certainly try.” Oakeshott titters like he’s Lee Mack on Would I Lie to You.
I break free of their triangulated beatdown. “Everyone listen!” I shout. The regulars - my friends and family, colleagues, people who I went to school with, friendly faces on my high street - all turn to look at me.
“Nige is on the grift again, gang. Just like he was when he talked us out of Pub Watch, just like he’s been for 30 years now. Remember when he used to sit in the corner saying we didn’t need CAMRA? He was wrong, we all know it. He’s not interested in us and our local, it’s all about him and his pals getting even richer than they are alread-”
The doors to my favourite boozer bang open. A horde of feral political correspondents pours in, all scratching and kicking at each other. Behind them strides Paul Marshall, multi-millionaire former hedge fund manager, owner of The Spectator and GB News. Outside in the darkness, barely visible, Rupert Murdoch skulks under streetlight - like the famous poster for The Exorcist inverted so the light shines on the demon not the saviour.
Marshall marches to the bar and buys a round for the house. The press pack descends on Farage, ready to slurp up his every word. Barnacles clinging to a rusted old cruiser.
“With Robert Jenrick and Nadim Zahawi bringing their experience of pints to our team, this pub is heading in the right direction. I am the only one who can save the pub. Liberal Lewis over there will tell you that the pub does not need me. That I’m bad for the pub.
“But he has no experience of the pub. He wants the Establishment and the metropolitan elites to have the pub. Not like me. So don’t listen to him talking the pub down, come with me and together we will make this pub great again!”
He actually fucking said it. ‘Make pub great again.’ MPGA. That’s not even a word. I wasn’t expecting that.
Where have you been, Inner Voice? I’ve been getting dogpiled out here. He literally invited the Establishment in, then called me the Establishment. How the fuck do I respond to that? It’s straight up lies. That prick went to public school; I didn’t even go to university.
Mate, I’m just a narrative device. To be honest, I forgot I was here. I can’t actually help you with anything aside from the odd intrusive thought. You’re on your own.
I turn to the regulars.
“Come on now, you lot know me. You know how much I care about the pub. I love this place, I want it to thrive. It’s the best fucking pub in town.”
Paul Marshall throws a grand at Tim. “Drinks are on me!”
“Mr Holmes, why do you hate the pub?” trills the enthusiastic BBC correspondent, hanging from Nige’s belt buckle.
The regulars glower at me.
“You’ve always hated the pub, Lewis,” says one.
“If you don’t like the pub, Lewis, just leave!”
“Traitor to the pub!”
“Lock ‘im up!”
Tim raises his arms. “Alright, enough! We all know Lewis is okay. Bit of a woke snowflake, but we don’t want to run him out for that. Lewis, Nige will look after our pub. Stop making waves and your next drink is on the house.”
Defeated, I slump into a barstool.
Paul Marshall peels a crisp pinky2 from his pile of money and passes it to Big Dick Tice. “Richard, please give that to Tim.”
Alan Turing disappears into Tim’s back pocket, and he dashes off to pour my free pint.
When its delivered, I level Tim with my glare. “Tim, just lately whenever Nige comes in, he’s always got that Marshall guy with him, flinging his money around. I don’t get why you let him get away with it.
“It’s like a few years back when he started buying that fat Eton twat’s rounds. That fat Eton twat completely fucked the pub for years after. What was his name again?”
“Boris something,” says Tim. “I thought he was a good lad, thought he was my mate. God, he turned out to be a total cunt, didn’t he? Wonder what happened to him?”
We both pause. Nope, no idea. Boris something is a bad memory these days.
“That’s my point, Tim, old son. Whoever Marshall throws his coin at, they get all Charlie Big Potatoes, believe their own hype and start to think they can run the pub. But they’re always rubbish, and they always fuck up the pub. You should really stop letting Marshall flash the cash.”
“Lewis,” says Tim patiently. “Think about it. He must be smart to have all of that money. And he buys all of our rounds. I’m never kicking him out. Now shut up and drink your pint.”
Thanks for reading. My ego is huge yet fragile, so please show some love before you leave. Bang that like button on your way out, or leave a comment if the piece landed with you. Also, I’m between jobs at the moment, so if you’re feeling flush you could hit up my Ko-Fi below and I’ll love you for all time. Cheers.
A pint of numbers is Kronenbourg 1664. I owe a debt of thanks to Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho for that one. Terrance Stamp’s delivery is the best advert that gutrot brew could’ve ever asked for.
A pinky is a £50 note.
Rather on the nose about Braverman.
People might start to think that you had access to some secrets...
Amazing post. Worthy of a newspaper column I’d say. Restacking