Pete Robinson: £5 a pint? That'll do nicely!
Conversation usually starts with, "Well ain't this bloody stupid?", followed by a vociferous condemnation of the ban, Nu-Labour, Pubcos, and the antis. With that essential ritual completed conversation can wander freely.
Of course that's the beauty of traditional pubs. They have always been great levelers of the social classes. You can be chatting on equal terms with a professor one day and a rat-catcher the next. Complete strangers will within minutes share their innermost secrets.
As ever I'm always greatly impressed at the way ordinary folk without much education can grasp complex issues and dream up solutions approached from their own unique perspective. Alistair Darling should spend time out there!
One hypothetical question I always ask is this. "Say if a few pubs were allowed 'smoking licences' - or were allowed to build sealed, internal 'smoking rooms' - but incurred high overheads as a result. A punitive cost for the licence, special ventilation systems and a ban on serving food, for example. How much would you be prepared to pay for your drinks?"
Now here's something very peculiar. 99% of the time the same answer always comes back. "I'd happily pay a fiver a pint, no problem", bursts the typical response.
Even the new breed of stay-at-home smoker deeply regrets the 'divorce' from their locals, lamenting old times with tearful nostalgia. This isn't just a long sulk they're having. They feel as if they're making a stand.
So I ask them what, if anything, would bring them back into the pub fold? Typically their attitudes have become very hardened. This is one piece of State interference too far and absolutely nothing would persuade them back under the present status quo. It's become a matter of principle.
But with the aforementioned hypothetical possibilities many say they'd be back at the drop of a hat. Again, when pushed on price the same '£5-a-pint' mantra emerges - and these are the folk acclimatised to drinking sub-50p pints of Asda's finest. "Well, tinnies just aren't the same are they?"
So there you have it. The people with a pathological hatred of cigarette smoke don't use pubs anyway - and never have. I'll bet most antis can't even remember the last time they were in a pub.
When they do go out you are more likely to find them tucked away in the corner of Costa's. Or munching through a tofu salad in some veggie diner talking in loud, affected voices about how 'ghar-stly' pubs still are. "All those common, sweaty bodies - and they don't even serve organic wine!"
If your pub is struggling maybe it's food for thought that there are some 12 million potential customers out there who would come in, stay most of the night AND willingly pay £5-a-pint.
Only a blatant piece of Government social engineering prevents you from tapping into that market and assuring your own prosperity along with the future of your pub.
The question is what are you willing to do about it?
