Roy Beers: End of an era at the bar that made it to The Publican's final three

I chose Latitude from the Atlas stable, now part of Highlands and Islands breweries combine, and it was a great choice. People who chose all sorts of other beers from the board (it's quicker asking for "a pint of 4 and two pints of 6" than reeling off the names) seemed equally pleased.

On the pub door, on this typically bleak and rainy January night, was a sign advertising the fact that the place would be shut for an hour and a half for a private function - which was the retiral of long-standing landlady Helen McCarroll.

When, late last year, I asked Helen if there would be a big do to mark her departure she replied with an emphatic "No! Definitely not!"

Foolishly, I'd taken this as read, only to find - now that the event was finally underway - that in place of the couple of dozen or so regulars and staff I'd expected there were about 150 people, many very well dressed, including the managing director of pub owner Maclay Inns. I should have realised this would be the case.

Trade people present included personable Jonny Delap, the owner of Fyne Ales, the superb West Highland brewery whose products always sell well at "the 3J", as its habitués increasingly call it.

Jonny, a cultured and distinguished English gent who appears to like nothing better than discussing beer with Glasgow pub regulars, has with wife Tuggy somewhat revolutionised beer-drinking in once keg-only rural Argyll. He had driven down to the smoke specially for the occasion, and was delighted to find one of his beers had sold out after four hours the previous day.

In some ways it was the sort of retiral party you might imagine taking place for any well-liked lady licensee who has done a good job over the years, but in this case many of the people - while enjoying the purvey laid on by the chef of Maclay's Lansdowne Cafe Bar (well done, chef) - recognised this was the proverbial end of an era.

Helen's replacement, Angela, is a popular choice, and has proved her mettle on innumerable busy nights, but it was obvious from the outset that this do was going to be no straightforward carriage clock-and-farewell affair.

From the CAMRA members present to regulars who never touch cask ale, and never want to, the verdict was the same: Helen made the pub the sort of place Roger Protz , to name but one, apparently never misses visiting when he's in Glasgow.

Out of a once scruffy little bar indistinguishable from many others in this (now "gentrifying") docklands area of the city she created a destination venue for beer fans including Yorkshiremen who have plenty of decent pubs, and beer, of their own.

She won what seems like dozens of CAMRA awards and trade honours, laid on considerably more than 1,000 guest ales (I've lost count of exactly how many), and more importantly delivered consistently superb results year in, year out.

Helen pioneered cask cider too, and while the pub was never a full-monty entertainment venue - it was always, first and foremost, a place for good beer and conversation - she organised some quite remarkable niche events, not least St Andrew's Day and Burns Night celebrations.

In a country where mawkish sentimentality sometimes lurks just around the next pint, these soirees were in a class of their own.

But maybe her biggest achievement has been to turn a humble corner bar into a rip-roaring success without "spoiling it". I've seen pubs with terrific beer which are nevertheless soulless, and places which "improved" but lost all of their good original customers.

That never happened to The Three Judges. It's as Scottish as a shortbread tin, albeit without any tacky tartan, but everybody feels welcome - from my occasionally visiting pal Isaac, a 70-year-old Jamaican retired accountant, to railwaymen, postmen, and a gaggle of beer-loving professors (for example Latin American experts Peter Flynn and one-time Mastermind finalist Francis J Lambert).

There's Tommy McLaughlin, the acerbic and scathingly witty terror of The Herald letters page; sagacious Telegraph crossword-puzzler Tom Symington, leading Glasgow restaurateur Ronnie Clydesdale (owner of famous restaurant The Ubiquitous Chip) and a bevy of ever-thirsty journalists, including one of The Herald's veteran top news men.

There's poet Brian D Finch, balladeer Tom Lawrie, right wing maverick columnist Gerald Warner, left wing trades union men, plumbers, brewers, wee men with bunnets, musicians, Poles, Greeks (including, no kidding, a philosophical barman by the name of Aristotle) … and, fairly frequently, me.

This sort of social alchemy doesn't happen by accident, even if George Orwell was surely right when he opined that the pub is the greatest achievement of the British people because it has arisen spontaneously as a social forum and not at the behest of government. Admittedly serving beer helps the concept along quite a lot.

It's relatively easy to exclude one sort of customer while wooing another, and even possible to make healthy profits this way, but Helen deliberately chose a far more difficult course. Her bar became "home" to its weird and eclectic mix of regulars, many but not all of them cask ale fans, by slow and infinitely subtle degrees.

Before taking on the challenge of The Three Judges she had run first The Rock and then Tennent's Bar - both large Glasgow pubs which remain hugely popular - and

had realised at an early stage that cask, which was then a rare commodity in Glasgow, could be the key to changing the profile of the pub without losing its essential bonhomie.

She faced many obstacles along the way, and in particular - she's always completely frank about this - arrant sexual discrimination in a profession which until very recently was a defiantly all-male preserve.

The doubters and the chauvinists were soon laughing on the other side of their faces as people fed up with boring, down at heel "men's bars" flocked to The Three Judges - a pub which has proved you can appeal to intelligent women without elaborate wine lists and fancy continental menus.

These days the bar is something of an oddity in the Maclay Inns stable, as seen from one perspective. Many of its venues appeal to classic middle class audiences, or are at least "upper mid market" - for example it runs a very swish bar in poshest-of-the-posh St Andrew's. It's not a company best known for smallish, traditional bars, but is known for heavy and careful investment in its generally food-led assets.

Regulars heaved a huge sigh of relief when a makeover a few years back turned out to be a great idea - apart from some infuriating little mini-tables riveted to the floor, a permanent pint-knocked-over accident waiting to happen.

The Three Judges is a one-off, proudly extolled as a flagship venue because of its now iconic award-winning status and, quite possibly, for the incredible diversity of its clientele - one no other Glasgow West End bar has ever come close to matching.

Helen can truly reflect on a career of remarkable achievement, and not in the past tense either. Every time she visits the pub as a customer she will see the familiar faces, and of course enjoy the award-winning beer - or cask cider - which made the pub one of the Publican's top three in the whole of Britain.

Her attention to detail in the cellar and ability to source superb English as well as Scottish beers (for example Durham, Marston Moor, Jarrow, Hadrian) put the bar in a league of its own. She lavished the same care and attention on continental premium beers, and went out of her way to provide the correct branded glassware.

"Who would ever have thought that a wee pub in Partick could get to the final three of the best in Britain?", she has said about her Publican triumph at least half a dozen times, although the regulars seem to think it's a fair enough result.

She didn't win the top honour, but it was, really, a fantastic achievement. On her retiral night Helen went out of her way to praise The Publican awards team for the amount of detail supplied on her itin