Guest posting: All hail the ale!

Marco Pierre White made me.

I had no need; no volition whatsoever, to scribe words of devotion towards the frothing firkin.

But somehow, an article in CAMRA's Beer organ about his Yew Tree Inn - a Home Counties favourite - made me see the solution for pubs around the country that mither they have scant call for real ale, and therefore forfeit mind, body and soul to the tasteless machinations of the Keg.

Everyone wants real ale. It's a fact of life. They either don't know it, or don't have the choice (see above).

It's a basic human right to bear taste buds. That's why lager wasn't invented, but sent down by the Devil to pollute minds and numb tongues.

Tasteless as the piss of a virgin, it has no place in modern society, where we have the luxury of choice.

Back to the argument of the slow-fermenting landlord:

"We don't get the custom round here for that brown stuff. No, we'd much rather serve lager with its infinite shelf life and appeal to the yob culture, denizens of which think nothing of splashing a significant proportion of their child benefit allowance on a pint of the pisswater."

Paraphrasing, see. But the sentiment is just.

Solution: Get beer - that of the real ale variety - and dispense via both pump and pie.

Get it? Beer is infinitely flexible in cooking. Many a recipe is enhanced by it, many more make it a mandatory ingredient. All those dark, rich, meaty pies; the Bologneses and the chillies; the pheasant, the partridge, steak and whimsiest of sausage dancing happily amid a tasty tonic of beery gravy.

So next time your bar steward refutes the allegation he may have a sniff of a chance of inn keeping redemption through the restoration of real ale to his lines - your basic human right, remember - tell him he looks so much sweeter in a pinny soaked in pink boobs and laced with loving care, dispensing food with the elegant, effortless ease of a flick of the lager tap.

Lager, indeed...

Dave Thackeray.