MyShout

Why are people so obsessed with the less pleasant details of everything, asks Stephen Oliver

Have you noticed that television has developed a particular taste for the more unsavoury or ghoulish aspects of life?

The other night, back late from work, I was tucking into a cheese toastie in front of the telly, doing some finger-dancing practice on the Sky remote. Suddenly, up pops this German doctor bloke, strange hat, scary glasses. I'd just ketchuped the toastie when he starts cutting a body in half with a bandsaw. That's an appetite killer for sure. And then there's the Scottish woman with a man's name and an unhealthy obsession with other people's turds. And what about all those programmes about the poor sods whose daily toil is down a sewer, catching rats or cleaning up after someone's topped themselves? Well, if they ever run short of material they should come and see me, because I've got some ideas for the next series.

There's a sort of unwritten rule in this trade that the pub companies and breweries never wash their dirty linen in public. Which is why you'll often see a "no comment" or something vague like "these matters are commercially confidential between us and our customer", when we're asked to reply to some allegation or other. It's for good reason, usually. If these matters ever get to the legal stage it usually doesn't help anyone to have aired views in public first; it's also not the done thing to come across to readers as the pubco Goliath to the licensee's David.

However, just in the interest of balanced reporting, you might like to know that even pub companies can get a bit upset at what some of their tenants get up to. No names here, no pack drill. But what would the programme producers make of the toerags who, having bought outside of the tie for weeks, invited all their regulars to write on every single piece of wall in the pub, nick or wreck every item of F&F, including historic fireplaces, and just for good measure, put through most of the windows? What would they make of the fact that the first and second floors doubled up as a dog run, with all the attendant souvenirs?

What would they make of another pub, where the departing tenant decided it would be amusing to tip several bags of Portland's finest down the sewers in the gents? Concrete evidence of criminal damage, I grant, but it rather slowed down the re-opening as we had to wait for a JCB to undo all the handiwork.

No doubt the Liverpool tenant who scarpered after taking out all the light bulbs thought it was very funny to leave the cellar trap open behind the bar. Unfortunately, the BDM who fell down the same hole trying to find the fuse box behind the bar found it rather less amusing.

The good thing is, all these are very isolated incidents and I'm sure most people in the trade would be shocked at them. But next time you see "no comment" remember there's probably another side to the story, one that I'd prefer not to get the Gillian McKeith treatment... to spare their blushes, not ours.

Stephen Oliver is managing director

of Marston's Pub Company