Farewell to one of the very best

The first time I met George Bateman, he took me on a tour of his brewery in Wainfleet, in Lincolnshire. The gesture was typical of the man: George was both chairman and managing director of a busy company, but his pride in the family brewery drew him away from his desk to take on a task usually handled by the head brewer or his deputy.

I shall never forget going into the cask-racking hall with George. Alongside the familiar casks - pins, firkins and kilderkins - sat tiny containers that looked no bigger than rugby balls.

"We call them 'piggins'," said George with his famous chuckle. "We supply them to our pubs that have a small turnover of beer."

A piggin was half the size of a pin. It contained 2.2 gallons of beer and sums up George's attitude to brewing and pubs as much as his company's famous slogan: "Good Honest Ales".

There aren't many breweries, not even small family-owned ones, which would have tiny casks made for pubs that sell minute amounts of beer. And there aren't many breweries that would keep pubs open if all they could sell was a piggin a week.

But George Bateman believed in community values above all else. He knew that rural pubs, especially those in the isolated Lincolnshire fens, were hubs of their localities. Close a pub there, and the community will wither and die. There wasn't much profit in selling a piggin a week, but what mattered most to George was keeping pubs open.

George Bateman died on 25 June and I detailed his life and career in an obituary in last week's MA. This is a more personal piece because - remarkably and against the odds - we became good friends.

I say "against the odds", because we came from vastly different backgrounds. George had a typical upbringing of a young member of the "beerage": prep school, public school and army service as an officer. In sharp contrast, I came from London's East End, left school at 16 and spent my National Service in the ranks.

My left-of-centre politics were a problem when I started to write about beer, as they were out of kilter with the views of staunchly conservative brewers in the mid-1970s.

But they weren't a problem for George Bateman. He was - to use an old-fashioned expression - "without side". He welcomed me as a kindred spirit because we shared a passion for good beer, especially the type of beer brewed at Bateman's.

I opened both the brewery's new visitor centre and, in 2002, its new brewhouse. Most brewery owners would have invited the local MP or a peer of the realm but George didn't balk at asking me to do the honours.

The visitor centre, which is filled with the rare humour shared by George and his son, Stuart, and the new brewery itself, were remarkable achievements. In 1987, George was saddled with appalling debts of about £10m, the cost of raising money to buy out his brother and sister who wanted to close and sell the company and retire on the proceeds.

If I had been George Bateman, I would have erred on the side of caution, slowly paying off the debts. But George, with his wife, Pat, and children, Jaclyn and Stuart, by his side, went full-bore for expansion.

Buoyed by the fact that his premium beer, XXXB, had been named Champion Beer of Britain in the mid-1980s at the height of the struggle for survival, he turned it into a national brand.

More pubs were added to the estate and all the pubs sensitively improved. New beers, including a rolling programme of seasonal ales, were added. The visitor centre attracted people to the small market town near Skegness and helped boost the image, not only of Bateman's beer, but cask ale in general.

George devoted the final years of his life to help found and run Linkage, a charity that runs residential courses and provides further education for people with learning difficulties.

Right up to the end, he was still putting something back into the community. Wherever you are, George, I hope they give you a piggin of good honest ale.

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