Lady of laughter

Meet the colourful landlady of a Norfolk village pub, who's into zany ceramics, loves people and still runs a successful business. Nigel Huddleston reports

Lucille Carter is having a craft moment. The interview is punctuated by dashes round the bar to accost newcomers and friendly attempts to prevent deserters heading to their cars.

When she returns she's lost the thread of what she's talking about: a craft moment.

"About a year ago I went to John Lewis. Do you know John Lewis in Peterborough? There are those ladies with half an inch of make-up on and all the sparkle-arkle on the perfume counter. Do you ever have that feeling when you go somewhere and can't remember why? That happened to me and one of these very beautiful and posh ladies said: You're having a craft moment madame'. I said what is a craft moment'? And she said: Can't remember a f****** thing'."

Carter laughs her impish back-row-of-the-class laugh and gets back to talking about the Woolpack, the pub in the Norfolk village of Terrington St John she bought with husband Barry in 2002.

As she talks, the car park is full, the kitchen is buzzing, there are customers standing along the bar and sprinkled around the tables, and the restaurant is playing host to a course in basic French to get by when you're on holiday, linked to a French menu as part of a local food festival. It's a Thursday and it's not yet midday.

The conversation with Carter meanders from her love of painting to her past career in a jazz band and the state in which the couple found their first pub, the West End in Wisbech, in 1971. "It was one of those pubs where­ hi girls­ je suis, nous sommes, vous etes­ je suis une idiot ­ bye­ you can't go yet, stay for some food­ it had an off-the-side little room with a little table with a metal shelf and magazines, like a doctor's surgery."

Singing role with a jazz band

Carter met Barry when she was working in a pub in the other West End, in London, and he was in the CID. She'd arrived in the UK through her singing role with Australia's Yarra Yarra Jazz Band, then worked as an art teacher, a job she'd also had back in her home town of Coburg in Victoria ("there's a huge prison there; I don't know whether that's symbolic"). She took the bar job to fill up time in the holidays and ended up managing it after her boss was freaked out by a huge glass fight.

The couple then went to turn around a pub in Swindon, where she recalls: "The restaurant only served take-away Chinese. And do you know what was on the jukebox? Military marches. Can you believe it?".

The pub burned down when engineers fitting natural gas decided to test their handiwork with a naked flame. They decided to move on, so they took over the West End and "knocked the hell of it" to get it into shape and remained there for eight years. Then came one of two phantom early retirements before they came back to run the nearby Woodman's Cottage for 19 years.

That takes us to 1999 when the couple retired again, to King's Lynn. "I didn't hate King's Lynn, I hated not doing anything," says Carter. One day, she walked into a local college, and ended up starting a BTEC National Diploma in Ceramics Arts & Crafts the very next morning.

Some of the plates from her examination exhibition decorate the Woolpack's walls, along with abstract prints of works by Matisse and Mondrian. There's a Warhol in the suitably pop-style ladies loo. The modern classics have since been joined by stunning richly-coloured watercolours which were Carter's entry qualification to the Society of Botanical Artists.

The second retirement ended when the couple unearthed the Woolpack, which had been abandoned for 19 months. "I was bored to death. I was painting 14 hours a day, but I thought I could do something else." Unfortunately, others thought the Woolpack ­ the former home of a succession of bankrupts ­ might not be the right choice. "The bank manager didn't want to know and the surveyor said don't touch it with a bargepole, but I thought let's go for it'."

Remortgaged their house

The decision to remortgage their house to go ahead with the pub was taken over a few too many beers in a local curry house. "People were ringing up saying why are you buying that load of crap when there's a heaving restaurant next door'."

Whatever its merits at the time, the steady flow of customers now enjoying great grub created by Mark Bull, and tireless service from Cheryl Hides and Jackie Manning, justifies the decision.

Manning has worked with Carter at a succession of pubs for 27 years and is in no doubt that Carter's character defines the business. "I've been on holiday in Florida and people have shouted across hello, Woolpack', because they recognise me and associate me with her. She does have a huge impact: it's the personality, the buzz, the welcome, everything. She's a very lively lady and that's why people come."

Such people management was becoming difficult at busy times, which meant a 55-cover restaurant was added to the premises last year. "For the first year we had to move people around, going up to them and saying: now that you've finished your meal, would you mind getting your little arse back to the bar'. Eighty per cent didn't mind but of course there were 20% who quite rightly said no. We'd leave them alone of course and go and torment someone else."

As you go through life you're guaranteed to have more and more craft moments, but a visit to the Woolpack is one thing you'll never forget.