Hamish Champ: What makes a great pub?

What, in the current economic climate or indeed any economic climate, makes a great pub?

Is it the physical environment one finds on entering, or the layout of the place? Is it the ambience which is created by the people who congregate in it? Is it the attitude of the bar staff, of 'mein host', towards its customers which can engender warm feelings? Is it the range of products it sells? Is it the price at which it sells those products? Is it, perhaps, rankable according to the literary and numeric skills of the licensee?

I'm sure we all have an opinion, and I'd like to hear yours.

There is another question that rarely gets asked seriously, namely why do people go​ to the pub? What is it that people find there that draws them in?

Perhaps it's never asked 'seriously' because for most pub lovers it all so subjective. After all, I can't pin down exactly why I like going to the pub, but then that is the point, for me at any rate. I just love walking into a pub environment and I also love the fact that my 'pub radar' will tell me within a matter of seconds how the experience is going to pan out. More often than not it's bleeping in a positive way.

I know I'm going over old ground here but when I was a youngster I aspired to go the pub to show how grown up I was. That doesn't happen much anymore, partly because there is so much else that teenagers can be getting up to besides sidling into the Red Lion or wherever it is for an under-age pint, and partly because there is so much paranoia surrounding kids and drinking alcohol.

Some view calls for pubs to be protected from the norms of a capitalist economy with scorn arguing that a pub should be subject to the same economic laws as every other sort of business; do well and you stay afloat, do badly - regardless of the reasons - and to the wall you go.

Many others clearly believe that the social contribution should be an important factor in making sure pubs survive.

I know how much a good pub in my neighbourhood means to my friends and I. News that a certain operator is soon to open a pub half a mile from where I live was met with unbridled joy when I told my mates about it.

That is what a great pub can mean; the difference between a poor night out and a great one.

I know there are plenty of doomsayers who will disagree with me when I say that pubs will still be around in five, 10, 20 years and beyond. The naysayers will point to the smoking ban; the tied pub model; the government; the supermarkets; the weather; satellite television; red tape; high rents; banks that don't listen; banks that listen but charge too much interest; lawyers; local councillors; the police, etc.

Some point to the "awful pubcos" and "discredited trade bodies", while others argue that some people who take on pubs just aren't up to the job.

There's some truth in all of these observations. But I firmly believe that while pubs might evolve into something other than the corner boozer we all know and love, at the end of the day customers will continue to go the pub, a pub, any pub, so long as the people behind the bar are up for the job of serving them and the atmosphere is friendly and the offer a good one.

The pub as an institution has no God-given right to survive. But what one can hope for is that the demand for the sort of experience that a great pub can offer is met by those operators who recognise it as such and can supply it.