Back to the future

Our predictions for changes in our 25th birthday issue weren't far off the mark, observes Nick Yates.

With customers entertained by a Sky 3D Virtual Stadium and a Who Wants To Be A Trillionaire? games machine, the pub of the future will be a strange place. Or so we reckoned in The Publican's 25th birthday edition, when we printed an extract from the diary of Buzz Blenkinsop, a publican in the year 2025.

The remarkable thing is that many of the predictions contained in this account of what life would be like many years on, now seem within reach.

Buzz, manager of Ye Olde Mousemat and Modem, told of how "since they raised the legal drinking age, I find it really hard to judge who you can legally serve".

Fortunately, he is saved by a scanner on his till that reads a barcode ID tattooed on the back of customers' necks. With the government's plans to introduce a compulsory ID card scheme, barcode IDs seem ever-so-slightly plausible.

Buzz's diary also mentioned a bizarre situation where smoking is restricted in pubs, and staff struggle to deal with people paying with the "old-fashioned datachipped holographic credit card". We all know how close the first of these scenarios is to being realised.

And with the switch to Chip & Pin payment, I swear the bartender looked at me cross-eyed the last time I tried to pay for a round with the archaic method of signing on the dotted line.

And so, for our 30th birthday, we have found out what it's like on the other side of the bar - for the customer.

Thirty years ago, when The Publican was born, our local was a very different place to today. What will it be like 30 years into the future? A bank report published last week found that the price of a pint will have nearly doubled by 2025.

Prices won't be the only change by the year 2035.

Diary of a night out in 2035​

Steve Skywalker*, a hover bus driver and regular at the Prime Minister's Arms, Waterloo, UK District, Europe, travels back in time to tell us about the pubs of 2035.​

• 10pm:​ A hard week piloting the hover bus along the Newcastle to London commuter route means I deserve a night out. So it's off to the local with my mates. We pass through the compulsory breathalyser tests on the door and get a table. Some of our group couldn't make it to the pub, but their virtual selves are projected onto their chairs via our table-mounted social centre.

Things are usually quiet this early on. The conclusion of Big Brother 40 is on the big screens. I prefer the bi-sexual pregnant woman, but most seem to be backing the black housemate who came onto the show a man but had a sex-change operation live on air.

11pm:​ The bar is getting busier as the highlights of the England match come on. Sky 3D virtual stadia have moved on a lot since their invention in the early 2020s.

12midnight:​ To go for a cigarette, I have to pop into the bar's smoking centre. The state-of-the-art air processing system recycles the polluted air and pipes it back into the bar room as pop music. The new Rolling Stones single is playing at the moment. Keith Richards died last year, but the rest are still going strong through cryogenic preservation, and Mick's voice sounds as good as ever.

1am:​ I go up for another round. There's a bunch of youngsters at the bar drinking RTDs - WKD Brown, the beef burger flavoured one. They probably think I'm an old fuddy duddy drinking 0.568 of a litre of strong Belgian lager - just like real ale drinkers were looked on in the old days.

2am:​ The RTD-drinking youngsters start to get a bit rowdy, and a scuffle breaks out. The robotic doorstaff move in to pluck out the trouble makers. I'm reassured to see that they're all bearing their certificates on their silvery chests - the mark of approval from the Mechanised Security Industry Authority.

3am:​ We spot some talent over the other side of the bar. Plucking up the courage, we email some flirtatious chatter over to their table and an invite to join us. They get up and leave. Typical. Things never change.

4am:​ It's time to head home. My head will hurt in the morning but I'm not worried - I'll take an Alka-Seltzer 3000 - you can inject this latest one yourself. That'll sort me out.

* Also known as Nick Yates