Global support for St George's Day bid
Norfolk licensee Tony Bennett is receiving support from all corners of the globe in his bid to establish St George's Day on 23 April as a national holiday.
Bennett has revealed he has received e-mails and letters from Japan, Canada, the USA and Australia backing his campaign.
Support has also flooded in from people across England since the licensee's doomed bid to get a St George's Day licence extension hit the national headlines.
Bennett claims he now has a mountain of evidence to show magistrates that St George's Day is a special occasion which meets the criteria for extra drinking hours.
He plans to return to the court on 19 April in another bid to persuade the justices to grant the extension.
"The magistrates said that if I could provide the evidence to demonstrate St George's Day was special they would reconsider.
"I think the volume of correspondence and support I have received amounts to a very telling argument," he said.
Bennett who runs the Otter pub at Thorpe Marriott, Norwich said that he only wanted an extra hour on the night to hold the St George's Day celebrations.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke, MP for Norwich South, is just one leading politician who feels St George's Day should be recognised.
Another MP, former Tory leader William Hague, has blasted "double standards" which sees courts grant extensions for St Patrick's Day but not St George's Day. Celebrities such as former boxers Alan Minter and Dave "Boy" Green along with the Daily Star page three girls, are due to make an appearance at the pub on 23 April.
