Hamish Champ: Look into my 2009 crystal ball. Murky, isn't it?
So how went your New Year celebrations? Really? Marvellous. As it happens I've never been so glad to see the back of a year as I was with 2008, but it doesn't do to dwell.
I didn't exactly party my ass off on the night of December 31 either. Rather I bid 2009 welcome in my flat on my jack, cradling a can of bitter - an appropriate beverage under the circumstances - and watching DVDs of 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail' and 'Life Of Brian', back to back. Jesus, I know how to live. Still, I had a laugh: "Welease Woger", etc.
Anyway, onwards and upwards. As we gird ourselves for what many believe will be a right bastard of a year from a trading point of view I thought I'd share with you my own, slightly off-the-wall predictions for the coming 12 months.
Naturally these musings on 2009 are not to be taken seriously. I mean, my crystal balls are likely to be no more on the money when it comes to predicting the future than anyone else's. So as they say on TV, don't write in; it's just for fun.
1. The Business & Enterprise Committee, currently investigating the pub trade, finally recommends that the UK's largest pubcos should be stripped of their ability to levy a beer tie on their lessees and that the whole pub leasing structure…wossname thing, should be overhauled. The government shunts the BEC's report and findings into another sub-committee populated by MPs who know even less about the licensed trade than the BEC lot, where it is discussed for three years, then forgotten about
2. Regional brewers Greene King and Marston's scoff everso mightily at the suggestion - dragged onto the field of play once more by bored journalists - that the two companies will merge to form a super-douper, fantabulosa ginormous regional brewer. Meanwhile finance advisers for both groups quietly run their slide rules over the numbers. Again
3. The Budget in March sees Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling raise beer duty by another 4p a pint. Or something like that. The swine. And with the whole ADZ/tackling binge drinking shambles gathering momentum, ministers' failure to create any joined up policy when it comes to the licensed trade is matched only by the latter's inability to get its bleedin' act together when it comes to lobbying government
4. Speaking of lobbying, the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR) deny reports they are set to merge. Three months later, they merge. In the absence of any new blood, the BBPA's Rob Hayward and the ALMR's Nick Bish play 'paper/rock/scissors' to see who will head the new organisation. Bish wins on 'best out of three'
5. Pub closures are reported to have risen to 50 a week by the middle of the summer. Ambitious government plans to convert shuttered boozers into social housing are condemned as 'half-baked' by industry bodies
6. Punch Taverns announces a multi-million pound rights issue to help shore up its balance sheet. It succeeds, for the time being
7. Enterprise Inns' chief executive Ted Tuppen reveals he will retire from the pub group at the end of 2010 to run a rally car team
8. There are growing calls from a wide spectrum of industry experts to ban the practice of pre-pack administrations. As with the BEC inquiry, the government makes a few reassuring noises about the need for corporate responsibility, then does bugger all
9. With the arrival of another rain-soaked summer managed pub operator JD Wetherspoon announces the '50p pint', reminding yours truly of many a wild Saturday night he spent in a pub in Greenwich, South East London called The Gloucester and where pints did indeed cost 50p. Although this was in 1978
10. Chelsea finish third in the Premier League behind Manchester United and Liverpool. After the season ends 'Big Phil' departs these shores, never to return
