VIP preparations pay off at the Dun Cow Inn
by Danny Fryer
Just what do you serve one of the most important men in the world?
That was the question worrying staff at the Dun Cow Inn, Sedgefield, when George Bush along with 1,300 police officers, FBI agents, armed marksmen and military helicopters popped in.
Management and staff spent more than 60 man hours making President Bush's visit to Tony Blair's local last Friday seem as near normal as humanly possible.
But, with guest ales including Back in a Flash and Black Sheep, what did the man who can have anything, actually have?
"He had a bottle of Bitburger Drive," said assistant manager, Jenny Waddleton.
He also partook of the cream of leek and potato soup, followed by fish and chips with mushy peas and apple crumble.
Thankfully both President Bush and his wife, Barbara, "enjoyed it enormously".
Adnams will be delighted the world's most powerful man enjoyed the Bitburger.
It would have been sold in through its Black Sheep account.
It may have been a quiet afternoon in the Mortal Man Inns pub (the managed chain run by ex-Jennings MD Trevor Green) for Bush and Blair but, for everyone else, it was a lot of hard graft.
"It was absolutely mad," said Waddleton.
"We'd been warned that he might visit, but nothing was confirmed until the Wednesday.
Even so, preparations began on the Monday.
We had also arranged for the installation of some new kitchen equipment and, of course, that arrived at the same time."
Security around the visit was absolutely enormous.
"We've had tastes of it before," said Waddleton, "whenever Mr Blair comes, but nothing on this scale.
But both the American and British security people were absolutely fantastic."
Although everybody, including proprietor Geoff Rayner, was exhausted after the visit, it went without a hitch.
"It was fantastic," said Waddleton.
Having hosted a visit by the former French president, Giscard d'Estaing, a few years earlier, the Dun Cow is no stranger to celebrity patronage.
Other VIP pub visits include: l The Queen paid her first official visit to a pub in 1998, when she called in at freehouse the Bridge Inn, near Exeter.
Media madness surrounded her visit, but at least the local council finally fixed the roads a long-standing bone of contention in the local community in preparation.
l Her Majesty paid an unscheduled visit to a pub in 1981 after her Range Rover became stuck in a snowdrift in Avon and she took refuge in the nearby Cross Hands Hotel, where she was hosted by the landlord and his daughter.
l Former US President Bill Clinton popped in to trendy London hangout Portobello Gold during his December 2000 UK visit and ran up a bill of nearly £20 before famously leaving without paying.
