This week is British Pub Week. Unusually for weeks it lasts 10 days, but no shame in that when you're celebrating a great cultural institution. Obviously one doesn't like to be cynical about such a well-meaning event but somebody's got to do it and I'd rather it was somebody who loves pubs and wants to see them thrive. Like me.
So what's wrong with Pub Week? For a start, how many people know it's happening? I mean ordinary people. It's my job to know about it. But how about those the message of Pub Week needs to reach – the lay pub-goer and, perhaps more important, lapsed pub-goers who might take up the habit again, given the encouragement.
No one I know, no one I go to the pub with, has mentioned it. Nobody mentioned it last year either. I haven't raised it in conversation, I admit, but it's not exactly front-of-mind for me either.
This may be a local anomaly. Here in Brighton this week is a big one for pubs anyway. Brighton celebrates Hallowe'en like no other city in the UK. They've even hived off the Zombie Walk to the previous weekend to ease congestion. Saturday night was White Night, a kind of all-night party that takes advantage of the clocks going back. Then we've got Bonfire Night. Brighton likes its fireworks too, and the biggest firework party of them all takes place just up the road in Lewes.
So there's probably not much time down here for Pub Week. No doubt there are pubs around the country that are using it to put on extra events, but you could hardly say it's gripped the public imagination.
The most successful Pub Week activity is the one where pubs invite the local MP along for a free pint and a bit of lobbying on issues facing the pub. This is good for PR with a story and picture in the local paper guaranteed if you do it right.
Whether it has an impact on decisions made in Parliament, though, is doubtful. MPs, whatever their party, will make syrupy comments about how splendid pubs are then go back to the Commons and continue to vote through measures that make it more difficult for pubs to survive.
Three days before Pub Week got under way the British Beer & Pub Association released its quarterly Beer Barometer. It showed sales of beer in pubs down 4.3% against last year in a beer market that's 1.6% up.
Chief executive Brigid Simmonds blamed taxes that have risen 35% since 2008 thanks to the duty escalator.
Pub Week, I suspect, will not help solve this problem. Pubs will have to keep working hard to give people reasons to visit and make them feel it's worth it when they get there.
And they have to do that all the time. Every week has to be a Pub Week. There are no shortcuts.
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