Branded glassware can get your goatee

On the way to the eagerly-awaited World Beard and Moustache Championships in Brighton last weekend (a bit similar to the

Great British Beer Festival, but with a longer queue at the bar and men getting blow-dries), a disgruntled drinker gave me an interesting take on what he sees as the trade's unnecessary obsession with branded glassware.

Rather than injecting the drinking experience with an enhancing thrill, he finds the whole thing a distraction to the flow of a night out.

Because of the different shape, size and degree of transparency of the various bespoke vessels, it's now harder to tell when a round's up.

So, without a standardised volume test (most effectively done with uniform glassware), one person in a group could be a sip away from finishing their Stella Artois, while an inch in the bottom of a Hoegaarden vase could last for five minutes.

Far from making this particular consumer feel more special about his drink, he thinks it's annoying, interrupting the harmonious ebb and flow of the pub-going process by having to peer suspiciously into his friend's glass to see if he's ready for another.

Stemmed glassware is the worst, apparently, which wasn't a view shared by the handful of women I surveyed, who quite like the idea of them.

Admittedly, if I haven't had my three Weetabix, I'll request a normal pint for my Hoegaarden, and if there are space issues at the table, the towering Erdinger glass won't get a look-in.

Yet branded glasses represent progress, even if they can pose logistical problems to pubs - and some drinkers.

That said, the sight of a well-loved tankard fills me with a sense of nostalgia for the old ways, even if it is invariably encircled by a potentially world-class specimen of beard.