The Poolie Bunker

Where from fat boy Asda or Morrisons?

tesco has 3 x 18 crate john smiths for £20

It grieves me when I go back home how much north east beer has gone down the nick. John Smiths and all other beer flavoured beverages are absolute crap. There's better things to drink

80/- and Exhibition in ours, Stongarm in loads of other places (especially nice pint of Strongarm in the Causeway)

Trying to think of a good ale of the top of my head and I'd go for Kelham Island Pale Rider from Sheffield, any of the Titanic ales and any of the Heywood Phoenix Brewery Ales.

There's some good smaller brewers in the NW, a lot of them based on breweries that the big 5 shut down when they were rationalising i.e. when the accountants took over the business.

I was weaned on Strongarm so I'll do some research.

You don't get the big icecream heads on a pint anywhere but Hartlepool.

they complain like hell if the head on the 80/- and the Ex isn't climbing up towards the roof !!

The 80/- in the Woodys is THE best pint of beer in town.

The Strongarm in The Causeway is probably second, but not a patch on the McEwans served up in The Woodcutter.

This post is descending into a real ale scenario... cue bearded, dungaree clad Trotsyist folk singers with one finger in their ear as the drone out a tiresome ditty about some God foresaken industrial dispute from the 1800's which their ancestors have ingrained into their psyche from their date of conception and I wouldn't care but they've been sociology lecturers since the whole pretend science was invented and also edit a magazine with a circlulation of 38 which covers Morris Dancing in the East of Bolton and probably gets a lottery grant of millions to keep them in a life of bearded squalor ....and they drive a Volvo estate!!!!!!............there, that's better

Funny you should mention that but The Prospect in Weston Village, where there's a folk session on a Monday night, is serving a good pint of Timothy Taylors Landlord along with Charlie Wells's Bombardier, Adnams Broadside, Deuchers and something called Rev James. All good pints but they tend to drink the beer warmer and flatter over here than in Hartlepool.

There is the occasional rendering of the Trimdon Grange Disaster and you're nearly right cos at that point most people have both fingers in their ears.