Unsung Hero of the Year 2009: Joanie Clement, The Nightingale, Balham, London

Customers come in specifically to see Joanie - and if she isn't working, they come back when she is. She has been working behind the bar at the Nightingale, a community local in Balham, for 33 years. Now 75, she is one of the two longest-serving members of staff within the Young's estate.

Joanie brings the community together, according to customers and her managers Lee and Keris de Villiers. Joanie waits on tables and serves drinks, cleans the south London pub and trains new staff.

The Nightingale Walk, an annual charity event, has raised more than £500,000 in its 30 years. Joanie has taken part in all of them and can be immensely proud of the money they have raised - and the difference this has made to the recipients of the various charities that have benefited. Joanie writes in the pub's newsletter, The Nightingale, launched in 2007. Under the title Joanie's Corner, she describes the latest developments in her life as well as events and people she has seen locally.

Joanie leads by example, treating everyone as if they are important. According to Lee: "She makes you feel as if you're having a drink in her front room - which is infectious and spreads throughout our team."

Joanie speaks fondly of John Young, the legendary late chairman, who used to visit the Nightingale and spend the odd hour drinking with senior members of the customer base.

He recognised her qualities and regularly popped in to say hello. "He was a lovely man," says Joanie, "He always made time for people - partly because that's the sort of person he was but also because it helped him to keep in touch with what was going on in the pubs."

The pub has regular individual and team 'buzz' sessions and Joanie has completed Young's due diligence training. She has also trained in preparation for the company's mystery visitor programme.

Lee says: "Joanie is an inspiration not just to those who work here but to the customers who come in every day. If I could be half the person she is, I would be very proud. She is the heart of our pub and community."

Joanie is grateful to her colleagues and the pub's customers for their sympathy and encouragement when her husband Albert passed away earlier this year. "They were so supportive that I feel that this really is my home now and would find it immensely difficult to live anywhere else," she said.