Hamish Champ: The Tuppen & Thorley Show hits town!
Forget David 'Dr Who' Tennant taking to the West End stage in 'Hamlet'. This week's hottest ticket is the much-anticipated appearance by the bosses of the country's leading pubco's in front of the Business & Enterprise Committee (BEC) of MPs at Westminster.
Among industry luminaries making the trip to London tomorrow (Tuesday, December 9) to answer questions about their company's business practices will be Punch Taverns' chief executive Giles Thorley and the group's regional operations director Giles Kendall.
As if that wasn't enough of a draw, following hot on the heels of Messrs Thorley and Kendall will be Enterprise Inns' 'capo di capo' Ted Tuppen and his Number Two Simon Townsend.
I'm popping along tomorrow and yes, I'm expecting fireworks as pubco bosses seek to deflect criticism of their respective 'modus operandi'.
It is bound to make for an entertaining session. The committee's MPs have got their collective ganders up. And with the pubcos being portrayed in many quarters of the pub industry as the villains of the peace MPs can smell blood - and sense some good headlines for their own political CVs into the bargain.
Do the pubco chiefs have cause to be nervous? Quite possibly.
Whether MPs make Messrs Thorley and Tuppen squirm remains to be seen, but there is enough public debate about the future health of the Great British pub and the role the pubcos play to suggest that some pretty searing questions will be asked of them.
How the executives handle themselves will be very interesting to watch.
This is all grist to the mill of group's such as the Fair Pint Campaign who wish to see the pubco operators' power broken up.
Even some seasoned industry types are now privately conceding that the time is fast approaching when the likes of Punch and Enterprise simply have to change the way they do things.
Words like 'unsustainable' and 'untenable' in relation to the pubco model as it now stands are frequently uttered. As The Stranglers once sang, something better change.
However I don't think the outcome of the BEC hearings will be as earth-shattering as some are hoping, despite the mauling the likes of Tuppen & co are likely to receive. Rather it'll probably conclude with a bunch of recommendations that will be consigned to a few more years of debate by another committee somewhere in the bowels of Westminster.
If the pubcos are smart they will turn up with some concessions already in the bag, say, relating to machine income - giving licensees a much bigger chunk of the takings, which in the current climate are heading for the door anyway.
The beer tie? It might face a recommendation to be curtailed in some way but that'll be as far as it goes, is my guess. I might be wrong of course.
And looking beyond the BEC hearings? Maybe, as some fervently hope, the banks will indeed call time on the indebted pub operators in the not-too-distant future.
Personally though I can't see it happening. Again, I may be proved wrong, but I don't think the banks have the appetite for such a decisive and financially burdensome move.
Better to restructure such debts, despite their size, than take on a 15,000-strong portfolio of pubs, with all that such a step would entail. We'll see though.
Meanwhile, all eyes will be on Westminster on Tuesday morning. It's going to fun!
You can watch the meeting on the Parliament Live website here from 10:30am Tuesday 9th December.
Also, here is the link to the Business and Enterprise Committee homepage.
