Pumpclips: some big boobs

Jeff is also a professional curmudgeon. Every morning, when others might use caffeine to clear the cobwebs, Jeff simply logs onto the Daily Mail and scans the headlines until he’s worked up enough righteous anger at their fear-mongering to propel him through the day. And if he needs a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, he pops into his nearest pub to top up his ire.

In 2009 Jeff started a blog called Pumpclip Parade, which was a name-and-shame rogues’ gallery of poor-taste pumpclips.
After two years he’s built a truly horrific collection, which has been featured in the Guardian, and ignited a wide-reaching debate on what is acceptable on the bar.
Before naming and shaming, I should stress that there is a role for humorous pumpclips. Every time I run consumer focus groups, I ask cask-ale drinkers of all ages how they make a choice in a bar with a good range of ales, what kind of thing attracts them. Without fail, the first reply is: “I like the ones with the funny names.”

Drinking is a fun experience, and novelty is a vital part of keeping the cask ale category fresh.

But we all have different ideas about what is funny, and Jeff’s main grumble is about what elves, dragons, appalling puns, sexism, racism, homophobia, even rape gags, say about real ale and real-ale drinkers as a whole.

There was a sliding scale there in that last sentence. Personally I don’t have too much of a problem with elves, but that’s because I was a teenage Dungeons & Dragons player and haven’t yet learned the good sense to deny it.

Appalling puns? Well, not for me, but they work for plenty of others. Beyond that, I can’t see the funny side.

Second Coming is a beer from Hart Brewery in Preston. Just in case you didn’t get the smutty double entendre, the design is a seaside postcard-style cartoon depicting a woman’s bare legs in high heels.

Between those legs, a dirty old man leers up from a bed, with what is clearly supposed to be a tumescent penis under the blanket.

Next, Jeff offers us Bobby Dazzler from Blakemere Brewery, near Northwich, Cheshire.

The description of the beer as ‘blonde, spicy and arresting’ is illustrated by — can you guess? — a repeated image of a Nuts-style blonde pin-up in a sexy police outfit, waggling her truncheon suggestively.

Cornwall-based Skinner’s celebrated the royal wedding by telling us: ‘Kate loves Willy’, and Haworth Steam Brewing Company, in West Yorkshire, uses a photograph of some very large breasts to reassure us that: ‘We may have our knockers, but our ales taste great.’

I’d love to say it was just a handful of small brewers who have the brains and style of 13-year-old chronic masturbators, but bigger brewers who should know better such as Greene King, Young’s (as was) and particularly Ringwood have all attracted Pickthallian scorn.

But the rotten tomato surely goes to Mighty Oak Brewing Company’s Rape and Stillage. The small print clearly states that the name is in fact referring to honey from the rape fields of Essex? Oh yeah?

Well why not base a pun on honey or bees then, instead of a phrase that is obviously about the other kind of rape?
Anyone thinking that it’s all a bit of a laugh should read the many comments from women who cite these offensive words and images as the reason they don’t drink cask ale.

And while some students might laugh at having to say “Give me a dirty dick”, most people will spare themselves the embarrassment and order a Guinness instead — possibly in a different pub.

So what’s the right balance? Again, it’s subjective. But for me, Robinsons pulls it off perfectly with Dizzy Blonde: a mildly humorous name for a blonde ale that crucially — here’s the thing — doesn’t feature a cartoon of a woman with long blonde hair and big breasts on the pumpclip.

I’d suggest this more tasteful approach is one reason why Dizzy’s rate of growth leaves the Raunchy Reverends and Top Totties of the beer world eating dust.