Now's the time to be as snug as a bug

A bit of lateral thinking this week: from snugs to jugs. I received a phone call from BBC Radio 5 Live asking me to adjudicate in a debate about the meaning and origin of the word "snug".

Apparently the airwaves had been filled all day long with a heated discussion on the thorny matter of the snug. Don't people have day jobs? Don't people own dictionaries any more? I have two well-thumbed dictionaries. Both confirmed that a snug in Britain and Ireland is "one of the bars of a pub offering intimate seating for only a few persons".

Acting as judge and jury, I made my ruling about snugs and explained that, in these days of open-plan pubs, you don't come across many of these tiny separate bars any more.

I followed a discussion on the programme about power sharing in Northern Ireland, which led me to recall the amazing Crown Liquor Saloon in Belfast, which has a whole rank of snugs down one side of the vast central bar.

The Crown in Great Victoria Street is a Grade I-listed building built in the late 1800s. It has a spectacular porticoed and marbled exterior that leads into a shrine to Victoriana: tiled floor, tinted glass mirrors and a moulded plaster ceiling. Beers and spirits are served across a unique granite-topped bar counter.

The pub is vast but there is a surprisingly-intimate air provided by the ornately-partitioned side alcoves or snugs, separated from each other by carved wood and painted glasswork, and with doors that can be closed to avoid the attention of the hoi polloi in the main drinking area.

The locals call the snugs, with due irreverence, "donkey boxes". Six people maximum can squeeze round the tables in each box, where they can sink glasses of stout and tuck into Irish stew or Strangford Lough oysters served by uniformed waiters.

Another pub of my acquaintance is the Cock at Broom in Bedfordshire. It has not one but four snugs. There's no bar and nothing as fast and recent as a handpump. The 17th-century ale house, in a row of old cottages, has four quarry-tiled snugs with latched doors, wood-panelled walls, rustic furnishings, and log fires in winter. Beer is served straight from the cask as befits such a fine and ancient hostelry.

The Free Press in Cambridge ­ named, tongue-in-cheek, after a local temperance newspaper that failed after just one issue ­ has a famous snug. Undergraduates hold regular stunts to raise money for charity by seeing how many they can pack into the tiny room.

A couple of nights after my radio spot, I was chatting at the annual dinner of the British Guild of Beer Writers to John Keeling, head brewer at Fuller's in London, and John Cryne, former national chairman of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) and now Camra's liaison officer with the Chiswick brewery.

John Keeling mentioned how well sales of ESB were doing since the revamp of the beer, which now has a hoppier character. Drinkers, John added, found the new branded glass for ESB especially appealing.

I said the next campaign should be for the return of the jug, the dimpled beer mug with a handle. If drinkers want beer, including cask ale, to be served cooler, then the best way to ensure that a glass of the real thing is refreshing rather than warm is to serve it in a glass with handle, which keeps hot and sticky hands away from the liquid.

John Cryne agreed and recalled a time when, if you asked for a pint, the guv'nor would request of you: "Straight or handle, sir?"

Whatever happened to jugs or jars, as we fondly called them? Do pubs have them any more, apart from those pewter tankards which regulars rather ostentatiously hang from nails above the bar of their local?

I imagine that in these hard times, when pub owners want to ring as much money from their outlets as possible, straight glasses are the norm because they are cheaper and easier to replace.

But, as winter draws on, I want to be as snug as a bug with a jug in a small room in my local.