Simon Ward

Industry consultant Simon Ward is less than impressed with Guy Hands' track record when it comes to pub life...

A question.

Who was recently quoted in The Times as saying: "We changed the way people looked at pubs, from warm beer, spit and sawdust, to somewhere to take your wife and kids, have a meal and a coffee"?

The people originally behind Chef & Brewer perhaps?

The initiators of Brewers Fayre?

A pioneer of the gastro pub?

Had it been any of these you would rightly accuse them of over-claiming.

But it wasn't.

It was that lifelong servant of the pub, Guy Hands (currently boss of Terra Firma Capital Partners, which owns Thresher's off-licence chain).

Let me remind you of Mr Hands' long reign in pubs.

If my memory serves, he got into pubs way back in 1998 when his backers, the Japanese bank Nomura, bought Inntrepreneur's pubs (then trading under the Unique pubco banner).

During the following year or so more pubs were added as the likes of Greenalls divested.

By early 2002 the Nomura estate had been sold.

So what Mr Hands seems to be asserting is that as recently as 1998 UK pub customers, all of them male, were struggling to wade through piles of sawdust (and worse) to buy unpleasant beer, sensibly having left their families at home.

In the space of four years all of this was changed by the Nomura team.

At least three facts make the claim laughable.

Firstly, my recall of pubs in the dark ages of 1998, or BG (Before Guy) as we call it, is somewhat at odds with his.

Most pubs served food, virtually all pubs had chilled beer, and try as one might, sawdust was almost impossible to find.

Personally, I have never found the availability of coffee to be a reliable guide to a quality pub, but for what it is worth lots of pubs offered coffee BG.

Secondly, what is the evidence that pubs were indeed transformed in the four years of Guy's reign?

A continued trend of improvement, I'll grant you.

But a seismic shift?

He must be having a laugh.

Finally, and most strikingly, was it the case that pubs were in a parlous state in 1998, and was it the case that they were transformed, in four short years, by the example shown by Nomura pubs ­ and was it Guy and gang who did it?

The fantasy seems to suggest no role for the people running the pubs ­ the tenants.

Hands is a shrewd, hardworking financial engineer.

He achieved a lot for his backers from the foray into pubs, and, in my view, this is to be admired.

Yet the claim that this in any way impacted on the consumer is risible.

More recently he has been central in Nomura's adventure into hotels with the leveraged buyout of Meridien.

No doubt we will soon be told that during this brief time hotel accommodation changed from stables with a bit of straw to luxury suites, where your wife and kids could play havoc with the minibar.