Dispensing with good taste

Dispenser is not a nice word. And when it

is coupled with the term beverage it results in a phrase that when bandied about a

public house deserves its own dedicated swear box.

For a "beverage dispenser" is the bit of kit (usually provided free by a cola company of some description) that looks like a Boots' electric massager and that, depending on which of several buttons is pressed, either fills a glass with a disgusting apology for a soft drink or fouls a respectable spirit with an undrinkable mixer.

Everything that squirts from this unpleasant saloon bar showerhead tastes of Sterodent. It is more suited to a dental surgery than a drinking establishment.

This fact, however, has not stopped the majority of Britain's licensees from taking the colas' shilling over recent years and installing just such a soft drink dispensing machine in their bars.

And while I do not care a jot what the actual cola tastes like - it is a drink for children and those with childish tastes - what is infuriating is that the Philistine dispenser is now used by idle barmen to dribble stale, warm water into my whisky rather than to top up my drink with freshly drawn cold water poured from a jug. This mixer abuse is also meted out to those who like a dash of soda or a slug of tonic in their snifter.

It is, of course, much, much too late now to stop this public house brutalisation of the civilised drink. However what is even more depressing is that the dispenser has not just ruined the pub short, but is now on its way to marginalising the pub bottle of wine.

Last month JD Wetherspoon announced that it was introducing a new type of "beverage dispenser" with the even more ghastly title of "multi-pour font". It is for what its marketing department will, I have no doubt, call "wine solutions".

The "font" serves four New World wines - from four lager-style beer taps - at varying temperatures: "a chilled glass of white wine on a hot day and a warm glass of red on a cold day", according to a JDW spokesman. (Not actually that different then from the old Stowells wine box attached to the wall containing a bottle of white and a bottle of red.)

One doesn't need to be the Savoy hotel

sommelier to know that the "multi-pour

font" will, with its extremes of temperature, successfully mask both taste and lack of

quality in the industrial quantities of wine it pumps out.

It is not a machine designed for those of a sensitive disposition. It is for the binge drinker rather than the bloke who enjoys the vagaries of a bottle of plonk and it will, like its beverage dispenser forefather, be an excuse for landlords to charge like a wounded bull without giving a bugger. Whoops... pass the swear box... I mentioned the "B" word.

Steal yourself for these prices

And while on the subject of charging like the Light Brigade there is no greater swindle than the Odeon multiplex's equivalent of a pint and a pie - a cola and box of popcorn. The pair is more expensive in real terms than a tablespoon of caviar and half a pint of Champagne.

Now the Odeon Cinema chain is opening its first style bar, Ambar, in a multi-screen cinema in Norwich. Its general manager Justin Holmes said: "Ambar is an extension of the cinema-going experience."

Or to translate that corporate speak - "one will need a second mortgage to afford a small bowl of olives".

Smoke joke north of the border

Those who do not subscribe to local Scottish newspapers might be interested to know that the smoking ban is not an unmitigated success north of Hadrian's Wall.

It is not just that the law has looked like an ass, with Mel Smith prevented from lighting a cigar when playing Winston Churchill in an Edinburgh Fringe production and Keith Richards reported to Glasgow City Council for puffing on a cigarette while performing with the Rolling Stones at Hamden Park. It is that the ban has become a "postcode lottery" depending on the puritanical nature of the local council.

Renfrewshire council, for example, is 50

times more likely to issue a fixed-penalty notice to a smoker flouting the law than neighbouring Glasgow.

Three councils have issued 75% of the fines, while 20 councils have not issued a single notice, despite sharing in a £6m windfall of taxpayers' money to fund extra enforcement officers to police the smoking ban.

While droves of smokers were to be seen puffing away outside pubs this summer, the bitter, dark, Scottish winter - the first since the ban came into force - is almost upon us and that will be the true test of whether or

not the Tartan Army will ignore this daft

legislation.

Water state of affairs

Wine is now cheaper than water in Australia because of the oversupply of grapes. Producers are selling some wines in unlabelled bottles for as little as 80p, half the price of the local bottled water.

With the Second Coming imminent, will Jesus Christ, on his return to earth, now turn wine into water?

And if so, will we agree with the sandwichboard men and admit that the end of the world is nigh?