Wife Swap star prefers landlady role

by Tony Halstead Merseyside landlady Linda Lavin has vowed "never again" after playing a starring role before millions of viewers in Channel 4's television reality show Wife Swap.

The 60-minute documentary, which involved the licensee swapping the Hermitage Tavern for an up-market guesthouse in Sussex, proved a huge culture change in more ways than one.

While Lavin tackled her new role of guesthouse landlady with gusto, bed & breakfast wife Deborah Collinson should have been getting stuck into the job of pint-pulling and beer barrel changing in the busy Liverpool suburban local.

But it quickly became clear that Collinson was hardly cut out for the cut and thrust of a life in a busy community beer house.

Nor could she cope with Lavin's soccer-mad lager-drinking husband, Steve, whose lifestyle appeared totally alien to her more genteel environment at the Priory Guesthouse in Bognor Regis.

"I think you could say Deborah was not cut out for pub life," revealed Lavin.

"Apparently throughout the whole 10 days she only pulled about three pints and tried to change a keg of lager, so she was hardly a feature behind the bar," she added.

Lavin, who has run the Punch-owned Hermitage for four years, decided to take out some "insurance" to guard against things going wrong in her absence.

"We have some good staff here, but I decided to recruit a relief manager to ensure the pub ran smoothly while I was away.

"We are a busy pub with a large crowd of regulars and I did not want our standards to slip," she said.

Meanwhile, at the Priory Lavin was getting into the daily round of breakfasts and bed-making.

That part proved relatively straightforward, but handling Collinson's son, Aaron, was more difficult.

Aaron, a chef at the guesthouse, actually quit his job when he found Lavin's discipline and rule-making too much to take.

A teenagers' poolside barbecue, which got out of hand during a warm August evening, also led to a run-in between Lavin and her young charges.

"I am used to getting all sorts of customers out of the pub at closing time, but I had my hands full with these youngsters," she admitted.

A week after the programme was shown Lavin is philosophical about the 10-day experience.

"I was disappointed with the way the programme-makers edited things, particularly with Steve at the pub.

"The Hermitage is a solid community local with some terrific regulars who were very supportive of the wife-swap idea.

"Quite a few of them egged me on to take part and generally supported the film crew when they were in the pub although some did resent the intrusion.

"But there were definite bonuses from the whole thing, because the programme has put the pub on the map.

In the week which followed the programme, trade definitely bucked up and we saw lots of new faces in the bar," she said.

But this is likely to be the end of Lavin's television career.

"It was an interesting and lively experience, but one I would not want to repeat," she added.